B V I 

.Gu r — : ; 
'ini he Salvation of 

The Little Child 



Glass 

Book 

Gopvri6htN° _ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 







The Salvation of 
The Little Child 
























Cincinnati: 
Press of Jennings and Graham 







' .Ob 



Copyright, 1909, by 
The Movement for the 
Salvation of the Little Child 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

APR 22 \m 

CLASS CL- XXc. No, 



The Ker 



This little book is the voice of a movement for 
bringing our children into the blessing of conscious 
salvation at the earliest possible time, and the life- 
long enjoyment of the favor of God. 

It is based on Scripture and the scientific facts 
of child-nature, and tested by observation, experi- 
ment, and reason. It gives an end, to be distinctly 
seen and directly sought from the beginning, which 
other books for the promotion of child piety have 
failed to present; and the relations in which 
this end stands to the capacities of the child, 
the period at which it ought to be realized, and the 
practical directions for bringing it to pass, are 
stated as simply as they can be, consistently with 
clearness, and as fully as limits suitable to the pur- 
pose of the widest circulation will allow. 

The writer has imagined himself to be present- 
ing his facts and pleas in a series of lire side talks, 
with a Christian father and mother, who are in 
general sympathy with his main purpose, but in need 
of instruction. The form of address, and references 
to his own experience, are therefore in the first per- 
son. In order to avoid tedious and confusing dis- 
tinctions and repetitions, these parents are supposed 
to have one child, a boy, whose life is followed from 
birth to a time at which his needs come within 

3 



4 



The Key 



the range of the commonly existing spiritual helps 
and into his own immediate care. Parents to whom 
the teaching comes too late for them to carry it 
out at the time, and in the order and manner sug- 
gested, will find no difficulty in rearranging the 
directions to meet their needs, while in Chapter 
XIII will be found those suited to the many cases 
in which the children have already passed the lines 
of the plan. All other applications are left to pa- 
rental instinct and providential leading. The fullest 
treatment would still leave a need of the special 
guidance of the Holy Spirit. To Him, in and be- 
yond the use of this book, the reader is earnestly 
and affectionately commended. 
December, 1907. 



Contents 

Page 



The Key, - 3 

I. God's Will for the Child, - - 7 

II. God's Will for the Parent, - - 12 

III. From Birth to Accountability, - 16 

IV. The Salvation of the Moral Infant, - 22 
V. What Did Jesus Mean? - - - 28 

VI. Dedication, - - - - 33 

VII. Baptism, ------ 39 

VIII. Training : Purposes and Methods, - 45 

IX. Primary Lessons, - - - - 52 

X. Learning to Know God, - - 61 

XL At the Threshold, - - - - 70 

XII. Perils, Possibilities, and Profession, 80 

XIII. The Alternative Experience, - 86 

XIV. Last Words, 91 

The Open Door, - - - - 93 



CHAPTER I 



God's Will for the Child 

Ah ! Here is a dear babe, bright and sweet, 
healthy and hearty! God has been good to you. 
According to the best of books, "Children are a 
heritage of the Lord" (Psalm cxxvii, 3). Precious 
they are to us, yet far more precious to Him; for 
they belong to Him in senses beyond any in which 
they are ours. He charges us with the care of them 
for Him; and no failure in our duty towards our 
fellow human beings can grieve Him more or bring 
upon us severer condemnation than the neglect of 
their interests, especially those of their immortal 
souls. No duty to others, rightly done, can please 
Him better. 

With this care in view He gives us parental love, 
and wills that it shall be like His in view and spirit 
and aim. In proportion to the fullness and growth 
of your affection for your child, and its likeness to 
the love of God, will be your ability to bless his life 
and minister to his happiness, present and eternal. 
In all this God calls you to be "workers together 
with Him;" and you are greatly honored by the 
trust. 

Now God's first will for your child is his salva- 
tion. He may plan very differently for different 

7 



8 Salvation of the Little Child 



children in other things, but as to this, He has but 
one mind for them all. And you agree with Him. 
You would have your child puny and poor, unedu- 
cated and unknown, but saved and happy and sure 
of heaven by and by ; rather than see him vigorous 
and wealthy, a man of learning and crowned with 
public honors, but without the saving grace of God 
and the hope of eternal glory ; would you not ? You 
will, of course, do your best for him in every way ; 
but set each advantage in its due order of merit, 
and fix, with God, your hearts and minds, first, upon 
his salvation. From time to time you will be 
tempted to put something else in its place until that 
special something can be accomplished; but, how- 
ever excellent that thing may be in itself, and in its 
proper order, firmly refuse to allow it more than 
its own rightful importance. Make it follow the 
highest good at a respectful distance. "The first 
thing first/' is God's law, as Jesus taught (Matt, 
vi, 33), and it is the only safe rule for us. 

Applied to the case of your child, it means that 
God wills that he shall give his heart and life to Him 
at the earliest possible moment, and be first, and al- 
ways, and fully, devoted to Him in love and service. 
Can you doubt this or think of God as having any 
other will for him? If you could, would it not 
shatter your faith in His goodness? 

Life can not be empty. It may be filled with 
good ; but if this is missed, evil will take its place, 
with injury to the soul. Can it be otherwise? And 
if this is true of a lifetime, will it not be true of a 
year or a day? Depend upon it, the child who has 
spent ever so short a time in conscious evil has 
received a hurt. He can not be all that he would 



God's Will for the Child 



9 



have been if he had spent it in good. We are apt to 
think that everything has gone well if children are 
converted in their middle teens, but that is a great 
mistake. I was converted at fifteen, had been 
brought up by the best of Christian parents, and 
had not fallen into open vice; yet I had ac- 
quired hurtful habits of mind and soul, which, 
though they did not finally prevent my turn- 
ing to God, made it more difficult than it need have 
been, and left weaknesses which I have had to watch 
and fight against ever since. I might have avoided 
the stress and vexation. I might have been a better 
and happier boy and man. I can not recall the lost 
benefit. I can not fully rid myself of the damage. 
I can not undo the wrong ; I can only be sorry. Can 
such an experience be the will of Cod ? It can not. 

But the life without salvation may run on and 
on through the years with all this loss of good and 
doing of evil, and at last be exchanged for a hope- 
less eternity of the same character. It is vain to 
flatter ourselves that this is not possible to our chil- 
dren. The most degraded of sinners were once 
babes such as yours, and by no means all of them 
the offspring of wicked parents. I have known 
such to come from the homes of the Christian 
ministry. Inheritance can not fully or even mainly 
explain such characters and careers. We may as 
well be sensible about this, and realize that every 
child, no matter how great his advantages from 
parentage and other conditions, has still in him all 
the possibilities of saint or sinner in this world, and 
of perfected and glorified spirit or of hopelessly evil 
and lost spirit in the world to come. I remember a 
series of pictures which gave me a vivid impression 



10 Salvation of the Little Child 



of this truth. At the left hand was a sweet child- 
face, promising everything one could desire; and 
from this, stretching across the page, two sets of 
studies of the same child as boy, young man, middle- 
aged man, and old man. The upper set showed the 
growth of noble character, until the most beautiful 
of all was the "hoary head," truly "a crown of 
glory," because "found in the way of righteous- 
ness" (Prov. xvi, 31) ; while the lower set showed 
the child going down — down— through increasing 
wickedness and degradation until he had become a 
loathsome object. And what is heaven but the 
progress, upward and forever, of the one course ; 
and hell, but the eternal progress downward of the 
other? Add to the child's own possibilities of evil 
that, when once he has chosen the broad road, the 
world and the devil will help him to destruction, 
and you have a picture that makes one shudder and 
cry, "God forbid!" But He does forbid it; and 
provides the gracious means for preventing it, and 
for securing the choice of the upward way with all 
its blessings. 

The consequences of the child's course, however, 
are not confined to himself. Think of what they 
will mean to you, to whom, of all his earthly friends, 
the vision has most of joy or terror. And the whole 
world is concerned. Every sinful career lowers 
the tone of the world's life, and makes its moral 
atmosphere less wholesome for other souls to 
breathe ; every life filled with good makes the world 
a better place for everybody else to live in. Above 
all it touches God. To save that very child, He 
gave Himself in His Son to die in the infinite sacri- 
fice of the cross, and in His Holy Spirit to work on 



God's Will for the Child 11 



his conscience and heart. So we may be sure that 
He will not be content with less than the whole of 
his life and love and service. The days of tender 
childhood are as much His by right as any, and when 
taken from Him, are not only spent under His dis- 
pleasure, but are also a cause of infinite grief to 
Him. Earth loses, heaven loses, and — I say it rev- 
erently — God loses, more than can be told, when one 
soul misses salvation for however short a time ; the 
fact will be eternally true and cause for unspeakable 
regret. Earth gains, heaven gains, and God gains, 
more than I can say, when salvation is accepted at 
the earliest time possible, and retained ; and the gain 
is everlasting and cause for unspeakable rejoicing. 

From every sane and honest point of view we 
are bound to see that the only experience that can 
really and finally satisfy God, the godly, and the 
child himself, is that which knows salvation from 
the outset, and gains all its benefits in both worlds. 
Come, then, into entire and whole-hearted agree- 
ment with God; not merely in what you believe 
about this subject, but also in what you are willing 
to be and to do to the end desired of Him. Say now 
with all your heart, ''All Thy will, Father ; all Thy 
will for our child, and for us in our duty to him." 
Can you, dare you, say less ? No, indeed ! You will 
gladly set your whole natures to seek and to do 
that good will. It is well ! 



CHAPTER II 



God's Will for the Parent 

In addition to what God does in direct ways for 
the salvation of your child, He calls in the help of 
human agents, and among these gives the chief 
place of responsibility to you as parents. Yours 
is the earliest and greatest opportunity of influence. 
No one else ought to take that place with any child 
as long as there is a Christian parent to hold it. 
Unsaved parents are not freed from this obligation ; 
they ought to be Christians and capable of their 
duty. Their failure is a dishonor, their children are 
wronged, and God is grieved. 

This work, however, is more than duty, it is 
high privilege. You remember that President Lin- 
coln used to say : "All I am, or hope to be, I owe 
to my angel mother ; blessings on her memory." 
When such a testimony includes the service I have 
specially in view, you may know that the mother 
has come into the greatest glory of her mother- 
hood. Why should it not be said as often of the 
father? Only because it is more rarely true. My 
own father, though a very busy man, did quite as 
much for me, in his way, as my mother. It was a 
grand way too, strong and yet kind. Why was I 
not won at the outset? I have not time to tell you 

12 



God's Will for the Parent 13 



all I know about it. I will do better by passing on 
to you the lessons that can be learned from my 
memories. I ought to say, however, that the in- 
fluence of my parents' faithfulness helped much to 
my conversion later ; and my heart is filled with 
gratitude upon every remembrance of it. 

When I hear a son of godly parents say that the 

Rev. Mr. led him to the Savior, I am glad 

for the parson, but very sorry for the parents. He 
must go through life remembering that though they 
cared for him in other ways, they did not lead him 
to his highest good. Did they think that it was the 
minister's special business? It may be; if so they 
sadly blundered. Though a pastor, I do not covet 
the privilege for myself or for my class. What 
right have I, for example, to the strongest gratitude 
of your child ? God has given me a duty and privi- 
lege of my own, and I am doing and enjoying these, 
in part, at this moment in showing yours to you. 
But I will not usurp your place, the right of those 
who gave him birth. 

Again, you need and desire the confidence of 
your child. You rightly wish that during his up- 
growing, and most of all when he is choosing his 
friends, his wife, and his life-calling, he shall con- 
fide fully in you, and make no plans that you can 
not influence. Now if you minister to his inner 
life so continually and so wisely that he can talk 
freely to you about it, and also help him to form 
right judgments for himself, you will do more to 
encourage his turning to you in his times of need 
than by all other means in your power. You can 
only meet crises as they arise; you can secure his 
spiritual confidence from the beginning. 



14 Salvation of the Little Child 



You can not now doubt that it is God's will that 
you should be the chief human agents in the salva- 
tion of your child. It is a purpose of love both for 
you and for him. So face your duty, claim your 
privilege, glorify your God, lead your child to Him 
and to heaven, prevent sin, increase righteousness, 
and, in the blessings that follow, find your present 
and eternal recompense. 

Now you are wondering whether my enthusiasm 
is justified by personal experience. Then I must 
take you back more than thirty years to the time 
w r hen our first-born, a daughter, was given us of 
the Lord, and, with her, the beliefs which I have 
been presenting to you. We dedicated our little 
one to Him at birth, and did whatever else occurred 
to us as helpful to the end in view. At that time I 
was in business, and my wife enjoyed the larger 
opportunity in training, and the supreme privilege 
of bringing the young spirit to the momentous de- 
cision w T hen a little less than five years old. It came 
about on a Sabbath when I was filling a distant ap- 
pointment as a lay preacher. A simple talk, leading 
directly to the plain issue, was followed by prayer, 
and the "great transaction'' was done. Imagine 
our mutual rejoicing when I returned to hear the 
story ! Our thanksgivings continue to this day, and 
increase in fervor and blessedness. 

Was it a deep and permanent work? It was, 
indeed! The evidences were immediate and un- 
mistakable, and the relation to God then established 
has never been broken. To-day, as a mother, our 
child is leading her children in the same way, with 
a clear recollection of God's dealings with her own 
soul to encourage her. 



God's Will for the Parent 15 



You ask if so early a devotion to the spiritual 
did not spoil her childhood, bringing into it an 
undue care and unnatural seriousness. Certainly 
not; why should it? On the contrary, she entered 
with a keen relish into the innocent pleasures of 
youth, enjoying them none the less, but all the 
more, because she loved her heavenly Father, and 
knew that they were a part of His loving will for 
her. But her happiness did not depend upon them, 
nor did she crave the doubtful or dangerous. She 
was a thoroughly natural child. 

Do you wonder that we are enthusiasts on the 
subject of child salvation? "Very unusual !" did 
you say? True, but there was nothing either in 
the methods or the results that is not equally within 
the reach and use of any Christian parent. Why 
should it not be the rule rather than the extraordi- 
nary exception? 

The opportunity did not come again. Our only 
other child passed away in infancy, but left us with 
a joyful interest in another side of the same blessed 
truth. Of this I will speak later. 



CHAPTER III 



From Birth to Accountability 

You ask what is the earliest possible time at 
which your child can give himself to God and enter 
into the blessedness of conscious salvation. I an- 
swer, at the time when he becomes responsible for 
rightly choosing between good and evil. Let us call 
that time the threshold of accountability. 

He is born with a moral nature ; but this, like 
his body and mind, is, for a time, in a state of in- 
fancy. By the growth of that moral nature he is 
every moment drawing nearer to that threshold, and 
if he lives much beyond physical and mental infancy 
he will certainly cross it and become answerable 
to God for his choice of principles and conduct. 
We will therefore call the period which reaches 
from birth to accountability the period of moral 
infancy. This puts out of the question the size 
and age of the child, and even the strength of his 
mind (within the range of sanity), and sees him 
simply in the moral view. He will be a moral in- 
fant as long as he can not make such distinctions 
between good and evil as are necessary to render 
him justly responsible for choosing the good and 
refusing the evil. For this he needs 1 Jth knowl- 

16 



From Birth to Accountability 17 



edge and the capacity to judge of what he knows ; 
and these only come to him gradually, with the 
growth of his mind and moral nature, and the op- 
portunities of observation and instruction. The 
circumstances of different children differ so greatly 
in these respects that we can not say, in any case, 
how long moral infancy will last. 

We must not, however, think of the child as 
altogether dependent for his moral growth upon 
human teachings. God has also provided for his 
direct instruction by the Holy Spirit, in ways suited 
to his needs and knowledge. Though he should 
never hear a word about God, he would still, at 
some early time, become accountable for obeying 
the inward voice which says, "You ought," and 
"You ought not," and which we call conscience. 
That voice represents God for the child, who as yet 
knows nothing about Him. Conscience is his think- 
ing and feeling, working together in considering the 
right and wrong of things ; and is dependent for its 
thinking and feeling rightly upon the guidance of 
the Holy Spirit, who is always working upon it 
during the continuance of His mercy. It will grow 
and do its work if it be not hindered. For hindered 
it may be by wrong teaching and other evil in- 
fluences ; and helped it may be, beyond the direct 
working of the Holy Spirit, by human teaching 
inspired of Him, as all right teaching surely is. 
So conscience grows with knowledge and moral 
capacity, and is more and more useful, until the 
mind can rightly instruct the spirit and join with 
it to direct the will in its choice. From that time 
the conscience will be exercised upon all moral 
questions arising, and will make its influence in- 
2 



18 Salvation of the Little Child 



creasingly felt, even though the child may not yet 
understand what it is or know it by name. When, 
at the first, he hears it say, "You ought," and does 
what it prompts him to do; the same voice says, 
"That is right," and he is satisfied and happy; as 
also when he refrains from doing what the voice 
forbids. We call that the approval of conscience. 
But if he disobeys, the voice says, "That is 
wrong," and he is unsatisfied and unhappy. Con- 
science not only judges words and actions, but also 
thoughts and feelings, motives and purposes, and 
approves the good and condemns the evil that is 
so often found mixed in them all. In all its ways it 
works for good throughout all honest life. The 
little child begins with a tender conscience, and 
ought to retain it in that condition as long as he 
lives. Nothing but evil can harden it, and the only 
way to keep it true and sensitive is to constantly 
educate it God-wards and protect it from whatever 
can draw it from its loyal course. 

Conscience, however, only explains accounta- 
bility in part. The child must also have the con- 
scious power to make and carry out the right choice, 
and successfully to resist the temptation to all 
others. Here, too, God does the necessary work by 
His Spirit; not forcing the will, but by His grace 
enabling it to follow His direction. The child will 
discover some time that he can do the right when 
he so chooses, and will use that power, though he 
may not recognize the Spirit in it any more than in 
the conscience. His right choosing and doing do 
not come from native goodness, as so many suppose. 
The child's course is determined, in every moral 
sense, by his choice, but only by grace can he make 



From Birth to Accountability 19 



a right choice, and even then he will need divine 
help to carry it out. 

Is there then no native goodness? There is 
not. Man in his fallen state inclines only and al- 
ways to evil ; and the right things that he does are 
chosen and done under gracious influences working 
on him from without; and so, not being caused by 
any native love for God and righteousness, do not 
make him right in himself or acceptable to God. If 
we should all be left altogether without grace, acting 
either directly upon us from the Spirit, or indirectly 
through lives and customs wholly or partly ruled by 
grace, we should soon be made sure of the total 
depravity of the human race. All the glory of all 
the good in us all, really and finally belongs to God, 
and as much in the child's case as in any. The 
natural depravity of his moral infancy is total be- 
cause it is of the same measure as his moral stature. 

To him let us return. When he realizes that 
everything with a moral quality is either right or 
wrong ; that he knows how to find out which it is ; 
that he ought to do right and can do it, and that he 
ought not to do wrong, and need not do it ; his moral 
accountability has begun. 

This general form of accountability applies to 
all men; but there is a special application of its 
principles to those who know of God, of their own 
sinful state, and of His plan for saving them from 
that state. The truths of Christianity are before us 
in the Bible, and every one to whom they come is 
called of God to believe in and accept them as the 
foundations of his spiritual life. God says, in effect, 
"I have made this plan and provision to save you 
from sin ; accept it. I offer My grace through My 



20 Salvation of the Little Child 



Son and Spirit ; let it do its work in you." Man 
can not, without sinning, ignore, neglect, or reject 
this call, for these are but different expressions of 
the same attitude of the human spirit against God. 
This view of the case was shown by Christ when 
He spoke of the Holy Spirit as reproving the world 
of sin because they did not believe on Him (John 
xvi, 8), and it is supported by other of His teach- 
ings (John iii, 18, 36, etc.). Moreover the Spirit 
was also to testify of righteousness. Christ showed 
this to be possible to man, by the effects of grace in 
His own human nature ; and, ever since He went up 
from the sight of the world, the Spirit has continued 
this testimony, that righteousness is attainable by all 
w r ho avail themselves of the same grace. Therefore 
no man who knows these truths is lost simply be- 
cause he has committed any other sin or any num- 
ber of such sins, but because he will not allow God 
to save him from sin. In this way a special sin is 
possible to those who are thus accountable, viz., the 
rejection of the revealed grace of God; and for 
persistence in this sin man will be justly and eter- 
nally rejected by God. 

This form of accountability comes to the child 
when he has learnt enough of Christianity to realize 
his duty to embrace it and to know that rejection is 
sinful. Just how much he must know about it in 
order to this it may be difficult to say ; but the Gospel 
is simple, and people of very humble powers of 
mind have, in all the centuries, found it easy to 
believe, and to obtain all its blessings. For faith 
may grasp the main benefit by accepting the main 
purpose and provision, and gather the rest of knowl- 
edge and advantage afterwards ; indeed, that is a 



From Birth to Accountability 21 



common experience. This is well within the power 
of the child at the threshold. It is not necessary to 
his salvation that he should understand it fully. 
But it is plain that by the time he reaches that crisis 
he ought to know enough of Christianity to avail 
himself of the grace it reveals to save, and keep 
him under the new conditions of moral accounta- 
bility. The importance of this will be better seen 
when we come to discuss the methods by which he 
may be led to accept it. 



CHAPTER IV 



The Salvation of the Moral Infant 

What is the spiritual state of the child during 
his moral infancy? We commonly speak of him 
as innocent, by which, if we use that word in a 
proper sense, we mean that he is innocent of any 
consciously evil intention, and this is true because 
the day in which he first fully realizes such an in- 
tention brings his moral accountability. But if we 
mean that everything that he thinks or feels, says 
or does, is good or even harmless, we are seriously 
mistaken. 

Now let common sense judge of this question 
in the light of the Word and human experience. 
The child, like all the children of all the generations, 
has inherited an evil nature. God has said so 
through David: "I was shapen in iniquity, and in 
sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm li, 5), and 
the same truth is taught and assumed throughout 
the Scriptures. The possibilities of expressing evil 
are, of course, limited with the moral infant; but 
there are enough of them known to us all to serve 
the needs of discussion. Think of anger, deceit, 
and selfishness, for example. In these the will is 
active, though the child does not choose them as 
knowing them to be evil. In an accountable person 
these would be consciously sinful, would they not? 
The only difference between the two cases is that 

22 



Salvation of the Moral Infant 23 



the child does not know, as the older one does, 
enough about the character and tendency of the evil 
to render him accountable for it. His innocence 
is due to his ignorance, but the evil in him is none 
the less real because he does not understand it. Not 
only is it in him, but it will continue there and grow, 
if it is not cast out by some power not of himself. 
It will bar heaven against him if it is not disposed 
of in some way satisfactory to the holy God, for we 
can no more conceive of Him as admitting to His 
heaven an infant soul with evil in it than any other 
soul in that condition. 

Does this mean that God will permit an infant 
inheriting an evil nature, and dying before he can 
secure deliverance from it, to suffer eternally on 
account of it? It does not. The case is fully met 
by His mercy. On what ground ? In what manner ? 
God saves the moral infant, not because he is "an 
innocent little thing," or "the best child in the 
world" in the eyes of his parents, but because He 
loves him infinitely more, and more wisely, than the 
fondest of human parents. He not only sees the 
child's present innocence of ignorance, and feels an 
infinite sympathy with his helplessness ; but also has 
in view his immediate and eternal future, and those 
immense possibilities that we were so lately talking 
about. If the child was allowed to enter heaven 
with his original evil nature unchanged he would 
grow to such moral maturity as is possible there, 
and the evil would grow in like measure. The place 
could not change his native inclination to evil. His 
own existence would be cursed by it, and heaven 
would be spoiled, which God has declared shall not 
be (Rev. xxi, 27). But the divine purpose is so to 



24 Salvation of the Little Child 



save the child from his evil nature that his eternal 
growth shall be in a holiness God-like and worthy 
of heaven. Where shall that salvation be wrought 
if not on this side of eternity? We know of no such 
change in the next world. Our Father, blessed be 
His name ! has provided for every child that he 
shall be saved throughout his moral infancy without 
any effort on his own part, and in the absence of 
any human help. 

That provision is made by the atonement of 
Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, just as for 
all the rest of mankind. The accountable, however, 
can only secure the benefit on fulfillment of certain 
conditions. Having consciously sinned by a wrong 
moral choice, they must needs turn from their sin 
to God and holiness by a new and right choice ; and 
repentance and faith are both the natural and or- 
dained means to that end. These conditions are 
necessary to their good as well as to God's glory, 
and we can not conceive of any salvation from sin 
as possible to them apart from such conditions. 
Now the moral infant, not being capable, either of 
such moral choice as is necessary to conscious sin- 
ning, or of repenting and believing; it becomes as 
just for God to extend His mercy and grace to him 
without conditions as to do so with conditions to 
those capable of fulfilling them. If the respective 
cases should be submitted to any man strong in the 
principles of justice, though knowing nothing be- 
forehand of God, I am sure that he would say that 
such a Being with such circumstances before Him 
ought to do exactly that which we judge from His 
Word He has done. God's justice secures that His 
law shall be adapted to the state and capacity of 



Salvation of the Moral Infant 25 



those He governs ; in what way could this have 
been better done? He does not say, on the one 
hand : "This child, not having sinned with conscious 
intent, needs no change ; admit him to My heaven 
as he is nor, on the other hand : "This child can 
not repent and believe ; turn him away," but rather : 
"This child has an evil nature from which he must 
be saved before he can enter into My glory, but 
since he has not consciously chosen evil and can not 
do anything to rid himself of it, the merits of My 
Son's sacrifice and the work of My Spirit shall meet 
his needs without any action of his own." The 
child's salvation is plainly within God's general plan. 
You ask what is wrought in the moral infant 
corresponding to the change brought about in an 
accountable believer, whose nature is cleansed from 
sin and brought out of spiritual death into spiritual 
life. I answer, that what is done in the one is done 
in the other, with no other difference in the immedi- 
ate result than would naturally arise out of their 
differences of mental and moral capacity. What 
then becomes of the inherited depravity? It might 
seem at first thought as if this ought to be removed 
from the child at the outset. That it is not is proved 
by the evidences of evil in such children. But is 
not this true also of accountable believers? Ask 
the most faithful. They will tell you that even if 
they do not wilfully disobey God, they know that 
they commit sins of ignorance, and these, as being 
contrary to the will of God, need His mercy, and 
can not be ignored merely because those who have 
committed them did not think of them as being 
wrong. Being sure that they have so sinned, they 
take the unknown with the known to Him, plead 



26 Salvation of the Little Child 



for His mercy, and believe that all alike are par- 
doned and purged. 

Now the manifestations of evil in the moral in- 
fant are like sins of ignorance in the accountable. 
Let me illustrate this from my daughter's experi- 
ence. During her moral infancy she was given to 
violent outbursts of ill-temper which no discipline 
served to cure. With the great change these gave 
way, though for a time the disposition occasionally 
showed itself. But it was then enough, when the 
storm was gathering, to say, "That would not 
please Jesus," to bring her with a rush to her 
mother's side, there to sob out her penitence. 
Though she clearly remembers the transaction with 
God at the threshold, she has no recollection of the 
earlier troubles. This may be explained by the ab- 
sence of conscious intent and condemnation, for if 
these had been present the impression would natu- 
rally have been more lasting. This seems to confirm 
my view ; and in such case, as the moral infant can 
not pray and believe for the removal of such evils, 
we are sure that they are pardoned and cleansed 
by God without any action on his part. 

It does not follow, however, that because the 
good Spirit does not do everything at the outset, 
that He therefore does not do anything. On the 
contrary, we have good grounds for believing that 
He does directly and largely limit the evil nature 
in the child, and that this must be taken along with 
His help to good, to explain what we are apt to re- 
gard as native goodness. There is really no greater 
difficulty in believing in the efficient and sufficient 
work of the Spirit in his case than in that of the 
sanctified believer. 



Salvation of the Moral Infant 27 



If then the work of the Spirit is limited during 
moral infancy, when is it completed? When does 
He complete it in believers? Do these attain, even 
at their best, to a perfect fitness for heaven within 
this life? I find nothing in Scriptural or human 
evidence to show that they do. True, Enoch and 
Elijah were taken to heaven without death as we 
know it; but doubtless a change was wrought at 
their translation by which the remainders of earthly 
imperfections were removed. Paul (i Cor. xv, 50) 
says that the saints who shall be living at the second 
coming of Christ will not "sleep," but will be 
"changed;" and this implies that they will be 
brought "in a moment" into the condition of those 
who have risen from the dead, and that they will 
all alike have incorruptible, perfected, and glorified 
natures. This may also be justly applied to the case 
of the moral infant ; and, as in the case of original 
salvation, without conditions. We may safely rest 
on the known character, will, and power of God, 
and believe that whatever is necessary to the com- 
plete salvation of the child in his moral helplessness 
He will do in him as well as for him. However little 
we may know of His method in this, w r e may be 
sure that there is no danger of failure. 

Does not all this provision of grace glorify the 
little ones in our view ? Insignificant are they, be- 
cause helpless ? No, indeed ! not even the babes of 
the most degraded. And for all, when they pass 
from us within moral infancy, there are the untold 
possibilities of eternity in the perfected and heavenly 
state. Whether in the cradle or the coffin, our most 
certain and blessed thought of them is that they are 
God's children. 



CHAPTER V 



What Did Jesus Mean? 

LET us now turn to such of the Savior's teach- 
ings as relate to our subject and see if we are in 
agreement with them; for He knew the divine in- 
tentions as none other could know them ; and if 
He did not make a full doctrinal statement of them, 
it is certain that whatever He taught was entirely 
in harmony with them. 

The story of His blessing the little children as 
told in 'Matt, xix, 13-15 ; Mark x, 13-16; and Luke 
xviii, 15-17, is familiar to us. We need only con- 
sider His ever memorable words of encouragement : 
"Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and for- 
bid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," 
as Matthew gives them ; or, "of God," as in Mark 
and Luke. The American Revision reads : "To 
such belongeth the kingdom." This gives a differ- 
ent view, but does not alter the teaching, for those 
who belong to the kingdom also possess it. The 
same Teacher said : "The kingdom of God is within 
you" (Luke xvii, 21). 

It is usual to explain the saying by what Mark 
and Luke show Him to have added, that: "whoso- 
ever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little 
child, he shall not enter therein." This accords with 

28 



What Did Jesus Mean? 29 



His action and teaching when the twelve apostles 
had been disputing "which of them should be the 
greatest" in the kingdom (Matt, xviii, 1-3 ; Mark ix, 
33-37; Luke ix, 46-48). His immediate purpose 
was to correct their false notions and save them 
from wrong ambitions ; but the way He took to do 
this reveals somewhat of the spiritual possibilities 
of the children. He called to Him a little child and 
said: "Except ye be converted (revisions read 
"turn") and become as little children, ye shall not 
enter into the kingdom of heaven" (to say nothing 
of being great in it). "Whosoever, therefore, shall 
humble himself as this little child, the same is 
greatest in the kingdom of heaven." "Whosoever 
shall receive one such (revisions add "little") child 
in My name receiveth Me." And to this He added, 
either immediately (as Matthew gives it), or later, 
(as Mark ix, 42 and Luke xvii, 2) : "But whoso 
shall offend (revisions read "cause to stumble") 
one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were 
better that a millstone w r ere hanged about his neck 
and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." 

From these incidents, taken together, we may 
find certain plain teachings. As to the first case ; 
if the kingdom consists of such as those little ones 
that were brought to the Savior, w r e may be sure 
that these themselves belonged to it. He did not 
specify the grounds on which His statement rested, 
but we are not left to assume that they belonged to 
it simply because they were of a humble and trust- 
ful spirit, for that is not all that is necessary to 
salvation, as He elsewhere made certain; for ex- 
ample, in John iii, 3, 5. They were either moral 
infants or child-believers. If they had reached ac- 



30 Salvation of the Little Child 



countability and were living in conscious choice 
of evil, He could not have truly said that of such 
was His kingdom. From the terms used in the 
Gospel we judge that some, if not all, were of the 
former class. Matthew calls them "little children ;" 
Mark, "young (revisions, "little") children;" and 
Luke, "infants" (revisions, "babes"). If we under- 
stand Christ as meaning that they were in His 
kingdom because of the provision of grace for their 
state, all difficulty disappears. Then, too, we can 
see the strongest reason for His blessing them, and 
why the receiving of such in His name, or as belong- 
ing to Him, would be the receiving of Himself, 
for here is no reference to mere kindness to chil- 
dren for humanity's sake. If their only relation to 
Him was that of possible future subjects whenever 
they should enter the kingdom by conscious choice, 
His indignation at the disciples' efforts to turn them 
away could not be explained on the grounds given 
by Himself. 

As to the second case, the Savior's words "which 
believe in Me," declare plainly the spiritual standing 
of the little one before Him as a child believer. 
His warning to all who might cause such an one to 
stumble is consistent with this view, whereas noth- 
ing of their doing could disturb the saved state of 
a moral infant. And what a rebuke is given to our 
false notions of the incapacity of little children for 
the spiritual because of their limited years and 
knowledge, when our Lord declares to His adult 
disciples that they must become like this child-be- 
liever in order to enter His kingdom. 

Matthew (xviii, 10) records another teaching in 
which Christ warned His hearers, "Take heed that 



What Did Jesus Mean? 31 



ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say 
unto you, that in heaven their angels do always be- 
hold the face of My Father/' The angels He spoke 
of are not the spirits of children who have died, for 
the word He used means those who minister to 
others, as it is used for the pastors of the Seven 
Churches of Asia (Rev. i, ii, iii), and for God's 
heavenly messengers throughout the New Testa- 
ment without exception. So we may safely assume 
that these are angels appointed to care for the little 
ones, in number and forms of ministration accord- 
ing to their need. Christ spoke of this to show the 
value of the children in His Father's sight. It is 
pleasing, of course, to think of them as the subjects 
of angelic guidance and protection, but they are 
only so because they are the subjects of the infinitely 
higher interest of the God whom the angels su- 
premely love and serve. 

Immediately upon this Christ gave the parable 
of 'The Lost Sheep," and added (v, 14) : "Even' 
so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven 
that one of these little ones should perish." Here 
the child is seen in his early accountability as in the 
same danger through evil as the rest of the race ; 
and as, therefore, to be the subject of spiritual help, 
human as well as divine. He is commended to our 
sympathy and interest on the ground of his need. 
We find then, that though the Divine Teacher did 
not declare the doctrine of the salvation of the moral 
infant in the manner and terms of our last discus- 
sion, none of His direct teachings contradict or 
even qualify these, but are all in harmony with 
them, and, as far as they go, support them. 

If you ask why Christ did not deal more directly 



32 Salvation of the Little Child 



and fully with the case of the child, I answer that 
His treatment of it, in method and proportion of 
interest, w T as in keeping with His usual course with 
similar questions. He did not profess to make a 
full revelation upon it. His teachings were to be 
extracted from sermon and parable, conversation 
and act, and taken with other truths — as given by 
the divinely inspired men who came before and fol- 
lowed after Him ; and all of it to be viewed in the 
light of the laws of nature and natural affection. 
It was left to us to search out all that can be learned 
from these sources, and to set in order for ourselves 
a complete and consistent line of faith and duty. 
The obligations so discovered are none the less 
binding when we fail, through neglect, to find them. 



CHAPTER VI 



Dedication 

Having provided for the salvation of your child 
during his moral infancy, God wills that you should 
so work under His guidance as to bring him, at the 
threshold of accountability, to a free and full de- 
cision to continue his relation to Him in hearty love 
and service. Now if you are to accomplish this 
with the most of good and the prevention of all 
possible of evil, you must use the proper means 
faithfully and diligently throughout the whole of 
his moral infancy. 

What is your first duty? Dedication. The child 
is God's by creation and salvation, but He has given 
him to you. He is yours by parentage ; give him to 
God. Say to Him in plain words that you do so, 
and with praise for all the blessings and possibilities 
of good which you see to be his and yours. Dwell 
upon these until the Spirit fills you with joy and 
gratitude; until the greatness of your opportunity 
shall lead you to a due sense of the corresponding 
greatness of your responsibility. Then you will 
realize that you can not meet this except by His 
grace and power; and then you will pray for him 
and for yourselves, that God will work out His 
loving will. 

3 38 



34 Salvation of the Little Child 



What will God do in response to your dedication 
and prayers that He would not have done without 
them? How can these bring any good to the child, 
or their omission work him any wrong? I answer 
that dedication is an act of love and of faith. You 
love God and want your child also to love Him. 
You love your child and want him to enjoy all 
spiritual good. You believe that God wills what 
you so desire. He has already given him saving 
grace. How much of other grace can He not 
give? In temporal things you do not limit your 
desires to that which barely supports life, much less 
should you do so in the spiritual. Why should you 
not pray for the largest blessing for your child? 
God is not hindered from granting this in one form 
because of his incapacity for receiving it in another. 
Blessing is not confined to the giving of power for 
the immediate being or doing of things visible and 
calculable. The budding time and early stages of 
infant growth afford Him constant opportunity of 
giving good in forms unseen by you, and with 
effects which you can not measure. Can He not 
give him such spiritual help that — though without 
his knowing why- — he shall think and feel more 
deeply and clearly in his early days about the things 
of the soul than he would otherwise have done? If 
the child himself could pray for such help, would 
not God grant it to him? And since he can not 
pray, will not God so bless him in answer to the 
prayers of his parents ? 

Does the Bible help us here? It does. Take 
the case of Hannah, at the opening of the First Book 
of Samuel. It is plain from the story, particularly 
the facts of the vow and the naming of the child 



Dedication 



35 



(Samuel means, "heard of God" ), that this mother, 
and most likely her husband with her, so devoted 
him to the life and service of the Lord. I say "the 
life," because it was not merely to do things for 
Him that the child was given, but first to be holy 
in order to do holy and acceptable service. That is 
God's will; doubtless Hannah prayed in harmony 
with it. 

Did God do nothing special for Samuel during 
his moral infancy? Was not that beautiful confi- 
dence which answered to the call of the Unseen, 
"Speak, for Thy servant heareth," given Him in 
such large measure while unknowingly he was 
learning to trust? While conscience was forming, 
was there no unusual gift of the clearness, sensitive- 
ness, and power which enabled him in old age to 
challenge all Israel as to his integrity? He might 
have been a good and useful man without dedica- 
tion; he w r as, doubtless, a better and more useful 
man because of it; and there is every reason for 
believing that what God wrought in him in response 
to it ran parallel with his development from the 
outset. 

Does modern experience help us? As one in- 
stance out of many, take this : In 1884 died a man 
whose name was a household word in the Christian 
Church. His career was so manifestly directed of 
God as to mark him to his friends as a child of 
providence. He was always under the influence of 
grace. By and by came the call to preach the 
Gospel. Now he shall tell his own story as he told 
it when he had become famous. He said: 

"My mother was a widow ; I was her only son, 
and the only child remaining at home. It seemed 



36 Salvation of the Little Child 



impossible to leave her. I feared it might almost 
break her heart to propose it. But as I saw that 
the Church would probably call me, and as I had 
promised God to follow His openings, I one day, 
with great embarrassment, introduced the subject 
to my mother. After I had told her of my mental 
struggles, and w r hat I believed God required, I 
paused. I shall never forget how she turned to me 
with a smile on her countenance and her eyes suf- 
fused with tears, as she said : 'My son, I have been 
looking for this hour ever since you were born.' 
She then told me how she and my dying father, who 
left me when an infant, consecrated me to God, 
and prayed that if it were His will, I might become 
a minister. And yet that mother had never dropped 
a word of intimation in my hearing that she ever 
desired me to be a preacher. She believed so fully 
in a divine call that she thought it wrong to bias 
the youthful mind with even a suggestion uttered 
in vocal prayer. That conversation settled my 
mind. ,, 

Who was he ? Bishop Matthew Simpson, of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. Need I say more? 

But were not these men destined for great 
eminence, and was not their dedication providenti- 
ally ordered in view of that? We have better rea- 
son for believing that they were made great because 
they were dedicated. With their parents, public 
honors were not in mind. In each case the child 
was given to God to be used as He should see fit. 
That is the sort of trust that He most highly blesses. 
So bring before Him all your desires for your child ; 
but when you ask that he may be helped or used in 
ways not within the right of all, qualify your peti- 



Dedication 



37 



tions with a full submission to the divine judg- 
ment. It is doubtful if they will be granted in the 
absence of such submission. 

The child can, of course, upset your kind pur- 
pose. But so can he also successfully resist all 
your later efforts for his benefit. You can only be 
clear of your responsibility when you have done all 
that you can do; and dedication is no trifling item 
in the list of possibles. If you fail in this duty 
your child must needs lose whatever of good would 
have come to him by your faithfulness, and you will 
lose the corresponding blessing and satisfaction. 

But why not wait until the child can give him- 
self to God, and by fulfilling this duty then help him 
to do his ? I answer that you can help him better by 
doing it at birth ; for then you can tell him as soon 
as he can profit by it: "When you were a wee 
baby we gave you to God, and have prayed every 
day since that you may give yourself to Him." 
Will not all this past interest deeply impress him, 
and help him to a right decision? Will not your 
wish and prayer at his crisis be more influential 
because of it? 

Finally, will you not do your other duties 
throughout more fully and steadily for such an act 
at the beginning? From time to time you will be 
tempted to slacken your efforts, not necessarily 
through loss of love or interest, but under the 
pressure of the thousand and one cares of daily life. 
Then you will remember, and set these inferior 
things firmly aside, saying : "I must keep my word 
with my God." And, having so persisted through- 
out his moral infancy, will you not be ready to con- 
tinue that care as adapted to his accountable state? 



38 



Salvation of the Little Child 



Nothing will conduce more to the breaking up, 
among godly parents, of the neglect of these later 
duties than this making of such a solemn consecra- 
tion first of all. With other efforts in harmony, it 
will do much to insure the easiest and most thorough 
accomplishment of the designs of God. 



CHAPTER VII 



Baptism 

Nkxt comes the baptism of your child. 

Let us first regard this as a second form of 
dedication. In this instance, however, the act has 
aims beyond those immediately in view in the earlier 
form. For the honoring of God before the Church 
and the world, and for the good of both of these, 
this is a public act. It is a saying by the parents, 
before all men, that they believe that the child be- 
longs to God, not only by His right as Creator but 
also by redemption and present salvation ; and that 
they will work with Him for the further fulfillment 
of His will. 

Baptism so regarded, is helpful as confirming 
what has already been done in the home. Why not 
then make them one? Because baptism may be 
delayed by causes beyond your control, dedication 
can not. Besides there is no more reason for merg- 
ing the private in the public act in this case than in 
that of private and public w r orship. God calls us 
to both ; each brings its own blessings, and its dis- 
tinct gain in sense of obligation and strength to 
fulfill it. 

Baptism, however, is much more than a dedica- 
tion. As one definition has truly said, it is "an 

39 



40 



Salvation of the Little Child 



outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual 
grace." It is an application of water to the subject 

as a symbol of the cleansing of the soul from evil by 
the grace of God, bought by the sacrifice of Christ 
and applied by the Holy Spirit. It is also "a sign 
of regeneration or the new birth" of the soul from 
its death in sin into the new life of holiness. From 
the way in which Christ coupled together the cleans- 
ing and the new birth (John iii, 1-6), as alike es- 
sential to admission to His kingdom, as well as 
from all related Scriptures, we understand that these 
are wrought at one and the same time, and they may 
be regarded as two views of the same work of grace. 
Hence there is no need of a separate sacramental 
symbol to represent the new birth. 

Has the moral infant a right to baptism? I 
answ r er that he is saved by grace. The only differ- 
ence between his case and that of an accountable 
person converted from sin is in the form of the ex- 
perience, and not in its principle or efficacy. Since 
he stands so related to God under the provisions of 
His mercy that if he dies before reaching accounta- 
bility he will surely go to heaven, what is there in 
his case to make baptism a questionable proceeding ? 
If possessed by the grace, why not ready for the 
outward and visible sign of it ? If sealed for heaven, 
why not fit for baptism? 

But is baptism a means of grace to the child? 
It is. How can it help him? Just as dedication 
does ; in that God honors the act of love and faith 
by blessing him. We do not baptize him to secure 
his salvation ; for that is already his, and he is bene- 
fiting by it up to his present capacity. If it de- 
pended on baptism, the neglect of this by his par- 



Baptism 



41 



ents would send him to perdition, if dying within 
his moral infancy; cut off by God from His favor 
for what he could not prevent; which is unthink- 
able. But it is not necessary to regard baptism as 
a means of salvation in order to justify or explain 
it. Enough that it is a means of grace in the 
broader sense. 

In this case the parents are not alone in the act. 
On the other side is the Church of God, repre- 
sented by His minister, who accepts, in His behalf 
and that of the Church, the dedication of the infant 
by his parents. It is therefore also an act of love 
and faith on the part of the Church ; and as cer- 
tainly as in the case of the parents brings an at- 
tendant blessing. Still further, as saving grace has 
already made the child a member of the invisible 
Church, he is now made a member of the visible 
body ; and of that as a zvhole, and not merely of 
the denomination to which the baptizing minister or 
his parents belong. That he can not as yet take any 
conscious part in its active life argues nothing 
against this. A babe in arms is no less a member 
of his family because he does not help in its work, 
or even know of his relationship to those about 
him. Regarding him in this light, I should rejoice 
to receive him into "the communion of saints." Our 
Lord, in giving to the apostle Peter the command, 
"Feed My lambs" (John xxi, 15), had in mind 
all ministers, and all children who might be brought 
within their care; and in no way can the pastoral 
duty be better acknowledged and begun than by 
this blessed ordinance. How the Church should 
regard and treat the child from this time forth we 
will discuss later. 



42 



Salvation of the Little Child 



I do not forget that a great many excellent peo- 
ple are strongly opposed to infant baptism, and on 
grounds which they believe to be valid and sufficient 
for its rejection. 

Some say that baptism should only follow on a 
conscious acceptance of Christ as a personal Sav- 
ior, and that the proper order of the events is shown 
by His own words : "He that believeth and is bap- 
tized shall be saved" (Mark xvi, 16). Those who 
practice infant baptism accept that teaching as 
fully as any, when kept within its limits. For every- 
body capable of faith for salvation that is the true 
order, and such faith is a proper condition to their 
baptism. But it is not so with the moral infant. 
If it was, then all who die within that period, not 
being able to believe, would be lost. Now they are 
not deprived of salvation, because they are incapable 
of faith; why should they be denied the sign of 
that grace which is theirs without believing ? 

Still it is urged that baptism is also a profession 
which the moral infant can not make for himself ; 
then why baptize him? Because it is both right and 
rational for his parents and the Church so to de- 
clare his saved state for the glory of God and the 
good of men, and without zvaiting until he can do 
this for himself. It will then be answered that you 
can not imagine God as approving of any such 
course, to say nothing of requiring it. Can you 
not? Strange as it may seem to such reasoners, God 
has done that very thing in the ordinance of cir- 
cumcision. Between this and baptism there are 
differences, but they do not affect this question; 
while there are likenesses which are vital to the 
understanding of it. It was commanded that Abra- 



Baptism 



43 



ham and his male descendants, throughout their 
generations, should be circumcised (Gen. xvii, 
9-15) ; and this was to be done to the babe of eight 
days' age, with whom intelligent consent was im- 
possible. Isaac was so circumcised (Gen. xxiv, 4). 
The interest of the Hebrew child in certain special 
covenant privileges only was immediately depend- 
ent upon it; but if it was willfully neglected, the 
parents were held to account; and if the child, 
coming to the knowledge of God's requirement, 
discovered that he had not been circumcised, it be- 
came his duty to seek it. The great point is, how- 
ever, that Scripture here proves that, on occasion, 
God can and does command a thing to be done to 
the moral infant by his parents or others, and with 
a moral purpose, in which that infant can not take 
any intelligent part. Why should it not please Him 
as certainly to have a child who is saved by His 
grace sealed with the sign of it, as to have a He- 
brew child sealed with the sign of a special cove- 
nant? 

But there is no specific command for it ? True ; 
but there is not in Scripture a specific command 
given for every separate duty. With circumcision a 
new principle was introduced to Abraham as the 
father of a race. Christianity sprang up centuries 
afterwards among that same race ; when the people, 
long familiar with the relation of the child to the 
special covenant, would naturally assume a similar 
relation to the general grace as expressed in the 
Christian religion, and, without a specific command, 
would follow a practice consistent with that belief. 
And it is impossible to prove that the first Christian 



44 Salvation of the Little Child 



pastors did not baptize infants. There is every 
reason to believe that they did. 

Still, would it not be better to leave it until the 
child could choose for himself? God did not think 
so about circumcision. But here the answer to the 
similar question about dedication also applies. 
Honor God by acknowledging His grace given to 
your child, so securing all possible blessing to him, 
and confirming your resolutions to further duty. 
When he can profit by it, tell him that you gave 
him to God in baptism as well as by private dedi- 
cation ; and explain that the sign was given because 
he was already saved by the grace. Will not this 
knowledge help him to continue under the same 
grace ? 

There are other objections made to infant bap- 
tism; but they may be as effectively answered as 
those just dealt with; and as they do not touch the 
subject as it stands related to the child's salvation, 
I will only offer you this general advice in relation 
to them all, that you will not suffer the perversions 
of infant baptism by any to turn you from being 
of those who do their duty fearlessly on right 
grounds. 



CHAPTER VIII 



Training: Purposes and Methods 

You want your child, when he reaches the 
threshold of accountability, to realize his past and 
say: "God has saved me when I could not take 
care of my soul, and if I had died He would have 
taken me to be with Him in heaven forever ;" and 
then to turn to his future and say : "I love Him for 
being so kind to me. I will now T go on to be His 
good boy, and live alw r ays to please Him." 

But he will have also the power to take the 
opposite course, and there will not be wanting in- 
fluences set to turn him from God. Do not sup- 
pose that he will drift into the experience of con- 
tinued salvation ; for that will depend on his choice, 
just as his conversion would if he lived for a time 
in sin. The reflection and decision you desire can 
only arise from knowledge and feeling, the prod- 
ucts of good teaching and influence, divine and 
human; and most of the human should be your 
own. 

I have just used the term "conversion." This 
can only apply with one who has first departed from 
God, and later turned back to Him; and includes 
repentance, and faith for the pardon and cleansing 
made necessary by that consciously sinful past. In 

45 



46 Salvation of the Little Child 



the child's case there is the same acceptance by God, 
and on the same general grounds ; but his action 
must agree with his circumstances. So to distin- 
guish these cases let us call the act of the child 
"self-dedication," and his experience "the unbroken 
relation" 

Most people seem to regard the child as "all 
wrong" until he gets right by conversion at some 
time in the accountable state ; not realizing God's 
work of grace during his moral infancy. The rest 
appear to think that the saved state continues with- 
out any action on his part, and that he is "all right" 
until he openly turns from God. In both cases the 
crisis is ignored, and no definite and suitable prep- 
aration for its being safely passed is made. It is 
to prevent the possible departure from God — which 
neglect will make, at least, highly probable — that 
you must set yourselves. You must continually 
have this purpose in view, and do all your thinking 
and praying, believing and working, consistently 
with it. 

God says to us (Prov. xxii, 6), "Train up a 
child in the way he should go, and when he is old 
he will not depart from it." The word translated 
"train" means to make narrow, or to limit, and 
bears a natural relation to "way," which is our read- 
ing of another word which means to be trodden, 
and "path" would be a little nearer to our idea. 
In a moral sense it is a course of life. Now a path 
leads somewhere ; this one leads to God and heaven. 
So the training of the child is to keep him in this 
well-marked path, in which he will walk with God, 
and by which he will at last reach His heaven. 

The disappointments of many parents may seem 



Training: Purposes and Methods 47 

to throw doubt on the assurance that the child 
rightly brought up "will not depart" from the way. 
There is failure somewhere in all such cases ; but it 
is not with God; it is with our weak and foolish 
humanity. Such failure may arise in our aims, or 
our methods, or in both. As to the main aim; 
with how many does this go beyond leading the 
child to a goodness that will insure his love and 
obedience to themselves, a greatness that is of this 
world only, a success that ends with a lot of money ? 
How few have chiefly, or even seriously, in mind 
the glory of God and the highest and eternal good 
of the child. 

Sometimes the aim is right, and still there is 
failure, because the child's needs are not under- 
stood, or the methods pursued are not suited to the 
ends sought. How many depend, for instance, upon 
a discipline of "do" and "do n't," ignoring the need 
of spiritual principles and powers, and of divine and 
human helps to make these effective ? When, how- 
ever, the aims are learned of God, and right meth- 
ods are employed with constant vigilance, under 
the Holy Spirit's guidance, how great is the prob- 
ability of success ! And until the child has had the 
largest possible opportunity in God's way, his 
friends have no right to question the truth of the 
Word as quoted. 

There is no comfort to be got from supposing 
that it promises a deferred benefit; so that, though 
the child may live long in evil, the training will 
come to his help some time and lead to his salva- 
tion. The testimony of the reclaimed wastrel, so 
often heard, "I could never get away from my 
mother's prayers," may be quoted in support; but 



48 Salvation of the Little Child 



this Scripture does not refer to such cases. God 
does not say that the child shall be brought back 
to the way, but that he shall not depart from it. 
The word is only for those who fulfill the conditions 
attached to it. 

Your aims, how r ever, are of God ; how may they 
be brought to pass ? First, concentrate your thought 
and means upon them, and limit your training dur- 
ing his moral infancy to those forms which will- 
most surely tend to the great purpose in view. This 
will include, of course, all proper care of body and 
mind. "A sound mind in a healthy body" makes a 
good foundation for the spiritual building. Re- 
member also that God wants your boy to be a real, 
natural child. But there is nothing in these that is 
in the least opposed to the course I advise; while 
by taking it you will make your duty and his more 
simple and easy than it can be made by any other 
in your power. The child will gain greatly ; not 
only at the first and in the highest sense, but also 
later and in the special preparations for school, so- 
cial, business, and public life. His moral training 
will make the best mental grounding for the secu- 
lar ; and the earlier his moral principles are settled 
on the only true foundation, the less will they be in 
danger of being disturbed by contact with the evil 
of the world. 

For this you will need unity in view and prin- 
ciple, and co-operation in practice. Therefore study 
yourselves; your characters, qualities, and powers, 
as these may affect your work and its results. The 
child owes to both of you his inheritance, physical, 
mental, and spiritual, and not to either alone. God 
has made you differently so that you may each fur- 



Training: Purposes and Methods 49 



nish some necessary element or proportion of in- 
fluence in his training. He gives to the typical fa- 
ther a strong nature for his part ; and to the typical 
mother a tenderness of disposition for hers, fitting 
her especially to deal with the child in his early 
helplessness. These differences, and all others of 
His making, will work together for a true success 
if the parents will so resolve. Children, of both 
sexes alike, need the whole and the best influence 
of each parent. Take God as your pattern; for 
He combines the father's strength with the mother's 
tenderness ; and, though you can only assume His 
authority in part, you can entirely and safely fol- 
low the perfect principles of His government and 
the directions and inspirations of His Word. 

For the ends you seek you can not live too holy 
a life or be in too constant touch with God. Make 
all matters, as they arise, the subjects of praise and 
prayer. In everything about which there is not un- 
mistakable direction in the Word and conscience, 
pray for special guidance, and wait for this rather 
than act in haste. Test all the suggestions that 
come to you upon such prayer by "the law and the 
testimony'' of God ; and if they agree with these and 
grow to clear convictions of duty, do not hesitate 
to follow them. Many of our saddest blunders are 
made with the best of intentions, even after severe 
exercise of our reasoning powers, and only because, 
in our self-sufficiency, w r e fail to inquire of God. 

Make the home cheerful and reasonably com- 
fortable and attractive, but let no ambition beyond 
these put the greatest interests in peril. Above all, 
let it be full of the sense of God's presence. Let 
its life be governed by the love of Him and each 
4 



50 



Salvation of the Little Child 



other. So will it be consecrated; and your child 
will have none but happy memories of it. 

The immediate results to be sought by train- 
ing are three; love, faith, and obedience. These 
he will need at the threshold to determine him 
to a right life; and together they constitute the 
character, conduct, and achievement for which God 
calls. They form the substance of holiness ; they 
assure the happiness of earth and heaven. The 
fall came through man's failure in them. Hell is 
the eternal loss of them. Only by their recovery 
can man be restored to the likeness and favor of 
God. For that recovery grace is given through 
One who exercised them in His human nature to- 
wards His Father through the power of the Holy 
Spirit, and so made that human nature sinless ; 
worthy to share with His divine nature in the re- 
deeming sacrifice of Calvary, and to be our Ex- 
ample. The universal and perpetual work of the 
Holy Spirit is all to produce these three elements in 
human life. A true love of God leads us to love 
whatever He loves, and to hate whatever He hates. 
A true faith leads us to believe whatever He de- 
clares, and to reject whatever He rejects. Love 
and faith depend upon each other; without the 
completeness of either the other can not be com- 
plete. The only obedience that is acceptable to 
God springs out of their co-operation and can only 
come by His grace. To these it is God's purpose 
that you should lead your little one until they shall 
rule his life. 

Now as to methods. There are three forms of 
training. First, teaching; the direct giving of 
knowledge and guidance by precept and example. 



Training: Purposes and Methods 51 



But beyond what you so teach, the child will learn 
from everybody and everything about him. It is 
yours to see, as far as possible, that all is helpful, 
and so to treat the hurtful as to counteract its in- 
fluence. Secondly, discipline; by which you im- 
part knowledge and guidance through what is 
done to him, and borne by him, or done by him in 
the use of his own powers under the authority and 
direction of others. Thirdly, personal influence; 
arising out of the intense love, the vigorous faith, 
and the glad obedience of the parent-teachers to 
God; and their corresponding regard for the wel- 
fare of their child ; together producing a contagious 
enthusiasm in which he will see the reality, blessed- 
ness, and greatness of the life of which they teach 
him more than from any other human means. The 
three methods overlap each other and co-operate. 
By teaching and discipline you keep the good before 
him, and the evil away from him; but the result 
will be defective in the absence of personal influ- 
ence. The most careful of teaching and discipline 
will fail to meet his needs when he can not see that 
they are given because his parents love both God 
and himself. But use them all, and each at its best. 



CHAPTER IX 



Primary Lessons 

The training of your child must begin with 
his life. His very helplessness and dependence upon 
you will serve to this. For a time you will stand 
in the place of God to his consciousness; and you 
must so teach him to love, believe in, and obey you 
that it shall be easy to engage him to his Heavenly 
Father in a similar love, faith, and obedience when 
he comes to know Him. So you must justify such 
a feeling towards you and treatment of you as this 
requires, and then teach him that you deserve and 
expect it. This is God's way with us. 

In the teaching of love you do not have to wait 
until you can tell the child by words how much 
you love him, to lead him to realize the fact, and 
secure his love in return. The smile and caress will 
soon teach him ; and when, by and by, you say with 
these a hearty "I love you, boy !" he will learn to 
associate the familiar expression with your words, 
and both will give him pleasure. Faith is first 
learned by love. He will believe in you, in his child 
way, because of your evident love of him. In both 
the personal influence will be the most powerful 
factor. 

Obedience must first be taught by discipline and, 
52 



Primary Lessons 53 



until words are of use, by sign and action. Depend- 
ence and authority will soon become realities to 
him; and they can not be too early or thoroughly 
learned. He will find that he is placed here or 
there as somebody else chooses, and that he can 
not get aw r ay when he wants to, but must wait until 
he is taken up. Such experiences, repeated many 
times before he can settle them for himself, make 
good teaching and discipline; and the personal 
influence comes with the parent who brings him 
love and pleasure in place of the pain of waiting, 
it may be with struggling and crying. By these 
things he learns the obedience of necessity. He can 
not as yet connect obedience with love and faith. 
He will by and by. 

Sooner or later will appear the manifestations 
of a will, which must be brought under discipline 
at once, even more for the good of the child than 
for the comfort of his parents. I remember how 
my daughter met her first battle when four months 
old. She had a trick, when suckling, of putting her 
hand between her face and her mother's breast 
which prevented her from reaching her food sup- 
plies, and then — worry. Her mother had to judge 
between the trick and the feeding which w T as best 
for the babe, and decided for the feeding. The tiny 
hand had to be put away again and again, and there 
was much stubborn fighting, in baby way, before 
her mother won the victory. 

Many difficulties with the will arise in the days 
of infancy, varying with different children in num- 
ber and persistency, but generally enough to call 
out the training powers of those in control. Very 
tenderly, but very firmly, must these be dealt with ; 



54 Salvation of the Little Child 



else that will, growing stronger with age, and 
even more by getting its own way, will clamor more 
and more for that way ; at first with those in sight, 
later with the unseen God ; and so — misery, and 
finally, if persisted in, unwilling subjection and 
never-ending misery. Here is not merely a ques- 
tion of "trick or feeding," but one of right or 
wrong, which must needs enter into any issue be- 
tween parent and child. That the child does not 
understand this, argues nothing. The parent, in 
God's place and under His guidance, will use honest 
judgment and then rightly insist on the child sub- 
mitting to it. It is sometimes difficult to enforce 
this ; but whenever it is so, depend upon it the 
difficulty will increase with time, so that with the 
very cases in which it is greatest there is the greatest 
need of insistence. Many give way at the start 
under the feeling that it is cruel to contend with a 
little child, and with the hope of getting the mas- 
tery later, only to find the contests fiercer and the 
means necessary to subjection more and more pain- 
ful to both parent and child. Believe me, the ear- 
liest settlement is the easiest. 

Accompany your action with speech and ex- 
pression ; with "you must" or "you must not," when 
needed, your face showing serious resolution ; by 
sheer force of repetition it will grow on him that 
these all mean the same thing, and by and by the 
words and expression will serve without the action. 
Later the command should serve when the face can 
not be seen. The whole course should aim at sub- 
jection with as little of contention as is necessary 
to that end. By contention I mean the calm and 
steady use of power — moral, mental, and physical 



Primary Lessons 55 



— for the maintenance of authority ; and this is 
kind, as choosing a little pain now, in preference 
to much more in the future ; a momentary loss of 
pleasure in order to a greater and lasting satis- 
faction. 

Now, in all such oppositions of the child's will 
to yours (when you are in the right) you are really 
contending with his inherited moral weakness, 
stirred up by the powers of evil, who hope to gain 
an advantage, even so early, by the formation of 
evil habits. When this thought distresses you, re- 
member that the child's present salvation is not in 
danger, and that the Almighty Spirit is working 
through you and with you to the better end. 

But there will also come, at such times, a strain 
upon his confidence in your love, and upon his love 
for you. He has learned to think of you with 
pleasure ; now you give him pain, of mind at 
least. He w T ill resent this, and — if nothing 
worse — will show less pleasure than usual at 
your presence and attentions. You would be 
glad to avoid this. You could, of course, hold 
his good-will for the time by letting him have 
his way in everything. But this would tend to 
make him, by and by, one of the sort who pout or 
whine or scold on every crossing of the will, with : 
"You do n't love me ; you wo n't let me enjoy any- 
thing I want !" and with this — misery. He would 
come to judge the commands of God in the same 
way, and quarrel perpetually with every one of them 
that was not easy or pleasant to obey. How will 
he learn to love, trust, and obey his Heavenly 
Father, who will not tolerate evil in him when he 
becomes accountable, if his human guardians tol- 



56 Salvation of the Little Child 



erate it now rather than put his love and faith under 
a temporary trial ? 

Now, since your right course in this is a diffi- 
cult one, the problem becomes also a trial of your 
loyalty to God and faith in Him. Go, then, to 
Him for love and wisdom, for strength and inspira- 
tion for your whole duty. Ask Him to give you 
the victory and to make the experience a blessing 
to the child. Believe that He will do so ; for with- 
out such a confidence in His interest in the outcome 
you can not do your best. 

Then study the case from God's point of view. 
Disobedience is more than a wrongful resistance to 
rightful authority. In the accountable it is a failure 
of love and faith. Now, while your child has not 
yet reached that stage, he is on his way to it, and 
you must so deal with him now as to insure his 
having right ideas then. He must be piloted safely 
through his present confusion to the certainty that 
you really love him, and only subject him to dis- 
cipline when it is for his own good. 

Adopt God's attitude towards good and evil. 
He is faithful to righteousness and opposed to sin; 
but He is also willing to suffer with and for those 
who sin, that so He may lead them back to love, 
faith, and obedience. That is a true view of 
Calvary. Express, then, your approval of what 
is right, and disapproval of what is wrong; but 
let your child see that, in any case of wrong- 
doing, your patience is not indifference ; that you 
suffer while you wait on his return to right- 
doing. When he is able to realize wrong-doing as 
against you, call for sorrow, confession, and re- 
newal of love and faith toward yourselves, and let 



Primary Lessons 57 



him know that you can only forgive him when he 
has met these just requirements. If you have need 
to punish him beyond this, prayerfully consider all 
the circumstances, and measure the discipline 
justly. As to the necessity and wisdom of punish- 
ment, the Bible is plain (Prov. xxii, 15; xxiii, 13; 
xxix, 15, etc.). No small part of the insolence 
with which men presume to sin against God is to 
be explained by the impunity with which as chil- 
dren they sinned against their parents. Such come 
easily to think of God as a Father who will pay no 
heed to their sin. You must not allow your child 
to get any such false notion of Him by the way of 
his present experience with you. 

You can, however, so administer the discipline 
as to give him, sooner or later, right views of it. 
When he gives way to you without punishment, he 
will discover that he has not really suffered by do- 
ing so. When he resists your will and compares 
your dealings with him then with those that go with 
submission, he will see the advantage of willing 
obedience. But he can only get a full conviction 
that you know what is best for him by the way of 
your faithfulness, proved by lessons consistent with 
your main aims and repeated as often as he needs 
them. That is how God teaches us ; and -when the 
human training follows His, the child will learn to 
regard all wise discipline as proof of love. 

From a thorough grounding in the obedience 
of necessity, the child must gradually reach the 
sense of moral obligation, in which the "must" and 
"must not" link with the "ought" and "ought not," 
recognizing the right of parental authority and the 
wisdom of yielding to it. But as soon after this 



58 Salvation of the Little Child 



as possible it must finally settle on love and faith, 
which furnish the highest grounds and strongest 
sense of obligation. For this, teach him: "I like 
to please you because I love you. You love me ; 
will you please me?" This is no bargain-making, 
as if you had said : "I will please you if you will 
please me." That element should be kept out of 
your plans. The child's love must be free, not from 
obligation, but from unworthy motives and from all 
compulsion save that which is natural to love. It 
is, however, perfectly right to teach him that love 
is proved by obedience, and that when he does not 
care to please you it is plain proof that he does not 
love you as he ought. Christ so taught when He 
said: "If ye love Me, keep My commandments'' 
(John xiv, 15, 24, etc.). The earlier this is taught 
the more easily and effectually will it be learned. 
Do not be surprised to find him divided between 
pleasing you and pleasing himself, nor count it a 
total failure of his regard. It will take time and 
training to bring him to the point where your wish 
will take first place ; and you must patiently work 
on till that be reached. A ready and hearty loyalty 
to you will be the best preparation for the larger 
loyalty to his Heavenly Parent. 

In teaching faith as a reason for obedience, you 
can believe in your child after a most helpful fash- 
ion. You may well appeal to his honor as an en- 
couragement to right-doing. But in order to the 
safe working of this, he must see justice and faith- 
fulness in all your dealings with him and others ; 
you must keep your word, of promise and warning 
alike. When he has learned to obey you because 
he loves and believes in you fully, you will natu- 



Primary Lessons 



59 



rally give him a similar love and faith. He will de- 
serve it. I do not mean that you will trust his judg- 
ment in matters beyond his capacity ; but you will 
trust him to seek yours, and to carry it out. In 
no other way can mutual safety and confidence be 
more fully secured in family relations. 

The child, however, has to do with other human 
beings besides yourselves. For his own sake as 
well as for theirs he must learn to love these ; to be 
reasonable and unselfish, and to treat his elders with 
respect. He must be so trained as to find it easy 
to accept from God at the threshold the higher and 
broader obligations of His law of the love of all 
men as he loves himself. On the way to these he 
must learn that a true self-love does not claim more 
than its due ; and you must see to it that he is not 
imposed upon and that he does not impose upon 
others. 

While all this is going on, conscience will be 
forming, and all his experiences will be shaping his 
ideas of right and wrong. He must be protected, 
partly by keeping him out of the way of evil people 
and partly also by checking and, if needs be, openly 
resisting those whose example may lead him astray. 
If an immediate protest can not wisely be made, you 
can wait on a better time, and say to the child 
what may serve to counteract the mischief. More- 
over, while always fulfilling the law of love to 
others, you should make character the great test for 
respect, and especially in the choice of those who, 
as your friends, will not only enter your home and 
help to determine its moral atmosphere, but will 
also show to your child the sort of people you like. 

Following on the growth of conscience will 



60 Salvation of the Little Child 



come his consciousness of the power to resist temp- 
tation. Yielding to your wishes when opposed to 
his own, and finding no reason to regret it, he may 
repeat the submission as often as the occasions 
arise. Every such experience is a gain, and will 
strengthen his inclination to good and resistance to 
evil in a degree proportionate to his ability to learn 
by it. Tell him, warningly when a fight is at hand, 
approvingly when it has been fought and won : 
"You can be a good boy if you choose." Gradually 
the idea will become fixed in his mind, and will 
join with conscience, both to bring in the conditions 
of accountability and to enable him to meet them. 
Keep in your view the unseen working of the grace 
of God, and pray for it and work with it through 
all this period. 

Until the child learns of God, the product of 
such love, faith, and obedience as come through 
the power of the grace and right training and are 
exercised towards yourselves and human society, 
will be a general child-goodness, the promise of 
greater things to come with the growth of knowl- 
edge. For each of his later obligations to God there 
is a present one, of like character, to yourselves 
and others ; and the more faithfully he is taught to 
fulfill the lesser duties now, the more easily will 
he be led to fulfill the greater when they come into 
his life. 



CHAPTER X 



Learning to Know God 

When will your child discover God ? I can not 
tell. The experience may come before he has 
reached the stage of his growth I last described. 
As to the manner of it, God may reveal Himself in 
some direct way ; but He generally employs human 
agency. 

Take one line of probability. The child will 
hear the names of God spoken with seriousness. He 
should never hear them used carelessly, much more 
profanely, by any without being shown by your dis-*- 
approval that such use is w r rong. How shall he 
revere a God whose names he has heard bandied 
about thoughtlessly in common conversation? 

These names he will hear when you gather and 
read reverently out of the Bible, and kneel, and he 
is required to be still and silent. One of you will 
speak, still reverently, to a Person whom the child 
can not see, but will sooner or later understand to 
be present and listening. What is this book ? Who 
is this listener? Why this stillness and serious- 
ness? He can not understand, but neither can he 
ignore it ; unless, indeed, you allow him to wander 
about or play during worship, and so he misses the 
good of the occasion. Many parents question the 
necessity of such a repressive course with a child 
of tender years ; but if it is put off it will be more 

61 



62 Salvation of the Little Child 



difficult to carry it out later ; provoking greater re- 
sistance and causing more pain and weariness to 
all concerned. Will he not be liable to hate all oc- 
casions when his freedom of movement or speech is 
restrained, and become a nuisance in the family, 
the school, and the house of God? Is it so terrible 
a privation for his play to be suspended twice a 
day, for a short time, to teach him the highest 
things ? 

But why should he be made to take any part in 
that which he does not understand? Will it not 
tend to make him a hypocrite ? No ; but on the 
contrary, it will bring him gradually to realize God, 
and to a proper feeling and attitude towards Him. 
He does not pretend to worship ; he learns the way ; 
and the more sincerely and perfectly you do your 
worshiping and hold his attention to it, the sooner 
and more easily and fully will he learn to do like- 
wise. Here is one of the strongest reasons for 
family worship. To the little ones it may be a 
powerful object lesson in knowing and dealing 
with God. 

Public worship will have similar help for him ; 
the same names, exercises, and reverence with those 
taking part; the same thinking and learning with 
him, and the discovery that other people than your- 
selves know and approach the Unseen One. But 
here comes the objector ! "Children ought not to 
be taken to church until they know how to behave. 
They disturb the minister and congregation, and 
worry their mothers." I answer that the earlier a 
child is taken to church the easier will it be to keep 
him quiet. So deal with him in the first troubles 
as to teach him to be still ; and then he will grow 



Learning to Know God 63 



up accustomed to the restraint, and gradually find 
his place in the worship. 

He will some time observe that you get quiet 
seasons alone with God; and that you lift your 
hearts in prayer and song in the midst of your daily 
work. All these occasions, taken together, will 
impress him with the reality of God and of your 
relations to Him. When you see the questioning 
look in his eyes, tell him that at these times you are 
talking with God, or reading or hearing or singing 
about Him. He will not grasp the idea at first; 
tell him at every new occasion, until he gets it and 
links the name with the Unseen Listener of his 
first lessons . 

Then teach him to pray for himself. That, in 
its order, will bring God to his consciousness more 
powerfully than anything else. How shall you 
teach him? Tell him first some simple facts about 
God and himself that will lead to the act of prayer, 
and dwell upon each until he is sure of it. Tell 
him that God is good. This he will understand by 
what it is for him to be good ; and, though this con- 
ception falls infinitely short of the reality with 
God, it is true as far as it goes, and is ample for a 
beginning. Then, God loves him; he will under- 
stand this by your love. He knows that you want 
him to love you, and now God wants him to love 
Him ; and you want this, too. We are commanded 
to teach this diligently to our children (Deut. vi, 
5-7). He knows that you want him to be good; 
next, so does God, and He can make him good. 
God is present ; will he ask Him ? Turn these ideas 
into prayers. Kneel with him and prompt him. 
He need not know how God does it ; but in this way 



64 Salvation of the Little Child 



he will learn that God can do it. The Spirit will 
answer his prayer by a conscious good feeling which 
he can enjoy without understanding it. This may 
be unusual ; but, if so, why ? Mainly because the 
children are taught to use forms rather than to pray 
in terms of their own desires. Let me tell you 
something that I read lately in a Church paper. 
A minister stated that he visited a home where the 
father was accustomed to scoff at Christianity. 
The mother had been brought up religiously and 
had not lost her convictions. She told her visitor 
that her little boy, when not more than five years 
old, startled her one day by saying, w r ith a sneering 
tone : "I do n't believe in this Jesus Christ they talk 
about. I never saw Him, I never heard Him ; I 
do n't believe there is any such person." Knowing 
from whom he had learned this, she was much dis- 
tressed ; but, controlling her feelings, answered 
him: "There is a Jesus, and if you speak to Him, 
He will answer you." He put the case to experi- 
ment. Opening the door, he called loudly: "Jesus! 
Jesus !" After listening awhile he came back to 
his mother with : "He did n't answer me. There 
is n't any Jesus." The mother replied : "But you 
called with a loud voice. If you want Him to an- 
swer, you must call gently." He opened the door 
again and called softly: "Jesus! Jesus!" Instantly 
he turned, and fairly flew to his mother. His face 
was radiant with a new light as he exclaimed: 
"Mamma! There is a Jesus, for He answered me. 
I heard Him." "From that time," said his mother, 
"he has firmly believed in Jesus." Be sure that 
none are more certainly answered of God than lit- 
tle children who really pray to Him. 



Learning to Know God 



65 



Now your child, rightly taught, will be likely 
to tell you that God makes him good when he prays. 
Then tell him that, if he wants God to do this all 
the time, he should go often to Him. So lead him 
to ask and expect more good, and yet more good, 
until that thought of prayer with a purpose is well 
fixed in his mind and heart. After each experience 
of the good feeling teach him to thank God for it ; 
for He calls for thanksgiving with our requests 
(Phil iv, 6) ; and this is as right for the child as 
for anybody. Show him how kind it is of God to 
make him welcome at all times and answer his 
prayers. Lead him to regard it as a privilege, and 
not merely as a convenience. When he has a firm 
hold on the central idea of each petition, suggest 
another. Encourage him to reach out for himself, 
to bring temporal and passing interests ; and in 
praying about these, always to ask God for such 
good, if it please Him, and so to learn that highest 
form of trust which is not afraid to leave all un- 
certain matters to His choice. If he brings a usa- 
ble idea, say: "Now pray for that;" if his idea is 
cloudy, clear it; if it is mistaken, correct it. You 
may not be able to explain the difficulty; but you 
can point out the right course, even though it be 
only to pray for guidance and wait till he gets it. 
At family worship mention him by name, with 
praise and prayer in the terms of his current use. 
That will show your interest and confirm his desire 
and expectation. In all his approaches to God train 
him to be honest ; to say what he means, and mean 
what he says ; otherwise he will fall into a hurtful 
formalism, which God forbid! It will help to pre- 
vent this if you suggest new wordings of his pray- 
5 



66 Salvation of the Little Child 



ers, and it will also enlarge his mind and freshen 
his interest. 

From the time that he knows that whatever 
grieves you also grieves God, call him, immediately 
upon anything of the kind, to prayer for His for- 
giveness, in addition to seeking yours. He can do 
this before he knows anything of faith in Christ; 
indeed, with this the practice will form a strong 
and useful link. 

The Fatherhood of God will be readily learned 
from his human father, who must therefore truly 
represent Him. The Creatorship of God must come 
to strengthen His authority and increase the child's 
sense of dependence and obligation. You will find 
ample material in the great kindergarten of nature. 

God as lawgiver may be brought into his knowl- 
edge by a link with your own government. You 
have been directing and forbidding, saying, "Do 
this/' and "Do not do that ;" and he has learned to 
obey you. So also God says "Do" and "Do not," 
as it is His supreme right to do; and we must all 
obey, even father and mother. He must then realize 
that your lives are made up of glad and continual 
obediences. Then all of God's laws are good and 
kind, and it is right and wise of us to keep them. 
These facts once within his grasp, you can tell him 
what God says about the things you wish him to 
do or avoid, supporting your own authority by the 
divine, and then making this the chief ground of 
direction. You will properly teach him that the 
Fifth Commandment and others require him to 
obey you (Ex. xx, 12; Eph. vi, 1-3; Col. iii, 20). 
But remember that if your child is to obey you "in 
all things/' God will hold you to account as sinning 



Learning to Know God 67 



against both Himself and the child, if you require 
of him anything contrary to His will. 

Right and wrong have become familiar to the 
child in his dealings with you. Carry these into 
their relations to all God's laws, and make it clear 
that nothing is right or wrong simply because God 
says so, but that He calls it so because it is so of 
itself ; and that when we can not judge for our- 
selves we can depend on His judgment and Word. 
Right is to be loved and followed, both because God 
loves and follows it, and because it is best for us 
all ; and wrong must be feared, hated, and avoided 
for the opposite reasons. Then, too, God is hon- 
ored, just as you are, by his right-doing, and dis- 
honored if he does wrong. The will and glory of 
God are thus bound up with his own interests. 

Thus far, however, the child only knows of God 
as one Person. He must find a like consciousness 
of His Son as Jesus Christ, whose humanity will 
bring Him wonderfully near to the child-nature. 
He will learn of Him as coming into this world as 
a little child like himself ; then as a growing boy, 
who astonished learned men by His knowledge and 
yet was not above obeying His human mother ; by 
and by rising into a splendid manhood, in which 
little children found Him a friend who would not 
allow even His best men friends to drive them away 
from Him, but took them up into His lap, put His 
hands on them and blessed them. If he had been 
there Christ would have done that to him. From 
such a starting point it will be easy to go on to the 
Savior's teachings, especially those about children, 
and to His miracles. The story of the Cross must 
be connected with the goodness and love of God, 



68 Salvation of the Little Child 



and the evil and need of men ; and he must see that 
Christ died that we might be saved and made good ; 
that He died for him as much as for anybody ; and 
that this is the greatest proof of God's love for him. 
If this is rightly told it will melt him to tears and 
fill his swelling heart with resolves to love, believe 
in, and obey Him forever. Then the resurrection 
and ascension, the intercession and reconciliation, 
the greatest happiness possible to him in this world 
and the world to come; all will be easy to believe. 
He will not want to explain away the miracles or 
discount the assurances. 

From the Divine Son you can go on to teach him 
of the Divine Spirit, whom he should realize as 
carrying forward the work of Christ in the world 
and as loving little children who, through His in- 
fluence, want to be good, leading them in the right 
life and enabling them to grow in grace and in the 
knowledge of God. He will become very real when 
He is discovered to be the immediate source of all 
his own good feelings and right doings, and he 
will be quite ready to believe that the life of his 
soul is of His giving. 

When your child has learned of Jesus Christ, 
teach him to pray to Him as God; and so to the 
Holy Spirit, when He comes into his view ; and 
then gather the three Persons into his thought as 
one, as "my God." When he finds, with all these 
changes of address, the same blessing in answer, his 
faith will be secured as it could not be by any state- 
ment of the doctrine of the Trinity unsupported by 
such experience. His ideas of worship will be com- 
plete when he learns that his praises and prayers 
will be, from that time, acceptable only as they are 



Learning to Know God 69 



inspired by the Holy Spirit and presented to the 
Father through Christ. Teach him all this, and as 
much more as he can receive; it will help to in- 
crease his love, faith, and obedience to his God as 
He grows before his spiritual vision from day to 
day, until his devotion shall greatly exceed that 
which he gives to you, and ever increase. 

A word as to the use of song. You can sing 
for him from the outset, but it is not wise to en- 
courage him to sing even the simplest of hymns 
until his knowledge is abreast of them. Then they 
should be explained, or they will easily become 
formal, absurd, or merely religious playthings. He 
must no more sing than say words without hon- 
estly meaning them. But, so treated, they will 
greatly help him to enjoy his growing conscious- 
ness of God and His loving will for him. 

Remember that the reception and use of all this 
knowledge is not wholly dependent on your capacity 
for teaching it, or the child to learn of you. The 
Spirit's power and working, both in you and in 
him, must be claimed and counted on ; and who can 
measure His possibilities? They alone explain the 
Savior's thanks to His Father because He had re- 
vealed these things unto babes (Matt, xi, 25; Luke 
x, 21) ; and His use of Psalm viii, 2 (Matt, xxi, 16) : 
"Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings Thou 
hast perfected praise." 

Perplexities will arise; do not discourage him 
from bringing them to you. Deal with them prayer- 
fully. If the necessary explanations are beyond his 
understanding, frankly say so ; but give him such 
practical direction as he immediately needs. But 
send him, as he grows, more and more to God for 
direct help. 



CHAPTER XI 



At the Threshold 

If we can not tell at what stage of the knowl- 
edge of human relations God will come into the 
child's view, neither can we predict how soon after- 
wards the crisis of moral choice will arise ; and for 
the same reason, that we can not know the special 
purposes of God, and what He will do directly to 
bring them to pass. The one question which your 
child will then have to settle will be whether he 
will give himself to God for the continuance of his 
saved relation to Him ; and whenever his knowl- 
edge and the convictions wrought by the Holy 
Spirit are, together, sufficient to that settlement, the 
crisis will come. In one instance the convictions 
may come with less of knowledge than in another, 
and may take the place of what would have been 
taught later by the parents. The Spirit can teach 
independently and in advance of human work. One 
blessed certainty we have, that He will not thrust 
upon the child his responsibility one moment before 
he is able to meet it. If your training is in line 
with the child's capacity, let not the coming of the 
crisis distress you. What remains to be taught by 
you can follow with all usefulness. 

You will see, however, that I can not deal with 
all imaginable cases that may arise; I will there- 

70 



At the Threshold 71 

fore assume that you have done your duty, and that 
the child's knowledge is sufficient to bring Christian 
accountability at the same time with the general 
moral form of the experience. These assured, you 
may see clearly the great advantages of your train- 
ing and the work of the Spirit of God. For here 
the child has not only the benefits of an uncondi- 
tional salvation, but also, running parallel with it, 
the experience of a conscious adoption of God's 
will, step by step, as he has learned it. In either 
case he is safe for a happy eternity if he dies within 
his moral infancy ; but if he should live beyond this 
without the training he would enter on his account- 
able state at a disadvantage proportionate to his 
ignorance of God and good, and his familiarity 
with evil. 

Though you can not tell when the threshold will 
be reached, God knows ; and if you ask Him, He 
will guide you to say and do at all times the things 
suitable to the case. The child will not of himself 
recognize it as a crisis, even when it comes ; but 
you will have seen it in that light all the time ; and 
it is a part of your duty to show him that it is such 
and to impress him with the serious consequences 
of his course for good or evil, as he may take the 
right or the wrong direction. 

Do not expect the occasion to be marked by ex- 
traordinary providential manifestations. Such may 
or may not arise ; but when they do not, you may 
be sure that they are not necessary to the result. 
Leave these to God; watch for the regular signs, 
and be ready to work in harmony with them. 

First among these will be the evident growth of 
conscience and of the conscious power to choose be- 



72 Salvation of the Little Child 



tween right and wrong. Teach him to judge for 
himself of the character of the influences that will 
now be specially working for the helping or hin- 
dering of a right decision. The good Spirit is en- 
deavoring to engage those developing powers to 
the life of holiness ; Satan is seeking them for the 
life of sin. With the work of the Spirit he is fa- 
miliar ; he ought now, if not before, to learn of 
Satan as tempting him to evil and discouraging him 
from good, and as using for his foul designs not 
only fiends, but also human agents in various guises. 
The temptations presented to one so instructed and 
guarded and thus far responsive to good, will not 
likely be to the openly vile, or bristle with out- 
spoken defiances to God. They will rather be cun- 
ning, Satan presenting himself as an "angel of 
light" (i Cor. xi, 14), and following his old policy 
of Eden, the main principle of which is common to 
all forms of temptation. His one purpose is to pre- 
vent, or allure from, all love, faith, and obedience 
to God. Now, w r hile you will shield your child in 
all wise ways, you can not cut him off from all the 
temptations that are specially calculated to confuse 
and warp his judgment at the crisis. Realize the 
power of evil, and reveal it to him as far as is need- 
ful ; but do not get into a panic nor suffer him to 
do so. Your love must be wise as well as faithful. 
It will not be effective without the calm trust which 
is assured that the God who has thus far saved your 
child is able and ready now to give him the victory 
over all his foes. Help him with the contagion of 
that faith in a supreme effort of personal influence. 
Now will his confidence, gained by your care of his 
spiritual interests, be of great avail. Whatever 



At the Threshold 



73 



there may be of independence, inseparable from his 
development, he will turn at this time to you, Then 
do you turn him more and more to God. 

Another sign will be his evident grasp of the 
knowledge necessary to his accountability for ac- 
cepting Christianity. When he realizes that he has 
been all along, and is then, saved of God through 
the death of Christ and the work of the Spirit, he is 
drawing near to the threshold. Show him then that 
this relation ought to continue all through his life 
here and hereafter, that God wills it, and that it is 
for his unspeakable advantage. Tell him of his 
dedication and baptism, and clearly explain the pur- 
poses of these. Proceed to show him that he must 
now give himself to God; that while we all belong 
to Him by right, He yet requires us to do this as an 
act of love and faith towards Him, proving these 
by obedience, and that He is giving him more and 
more a will of his own, that he may choose to do 
His will. In the absence of any temptation to the 
contrary, he will respond to this teaching and give 
himself to God. Look for this, help him to it by 
your faith. 

But he will probably be tempted at this point to 
refuse or delay his duty ; and in such case the crisis 
must needs wait on such an understanding of the 
nature and tendency of the temptation as will ren- 
der him accountable for his action in regard to it. 
He may be tempted to think that he has a natural 
right to please himself, and that there is no telling 
what God will want him to do or sacrifice if he 
gives up his life fully to Him. If his conscience is 
not already so instructed as to show the evil of this 
thought and fear, he will need help. The Spirit will 



74 Salvation of the Little Child 



speak; but so must you. How well it is that you 
can now remind him that, often as he has given up 
his way for your sake, you have never taken any 
unkind advantage of his confidence, but have all 
the more planned to help and please him because 
he trusted you. So it will be, and more fully and 
certainly, with his Heavenly Parent, who loves him 
infinitely more than you can do. The willingness 
to make an acceptable surrender of his will can 
only come by love and faith ; but he has already 
been exercising these with increasing consciousness 
of choice. Everything is in his favor. 

The rightly-trained child will know that to hold 
to God and good will assure him happiness and 
satisfaction, and that to take the opposite course 
will cause him the loss of these. Satan will deny 
this and urge that there is greater happiness in a 
life of assumed independence of God; the old lie. 
of Eden. If this appears, set before him the whole 
case. Honestly admit that there is a kind and de- 
gree of pleasure in the thought, and even in the 
commission of some forms of sin ; but show him 
that this can only last until the character of the sin, 
and its evil consequences in personal damage and 
the wrath of God, are realized. It was so with our 
first parents. The forbidden fruit was so attractive 
in appearance, and the assurance of real and last- 
ing advantage from eating it was so confidently 
given, that they ventured into the sin. Then were 
their eyes opened, indeed; not to happiness, how- 
ever, but to curse and pain and shame. This is 
typical of the results, earlier or later, of all sin. 
Set against the limited and fleeting pleasure that 
which is true and abiding, which comes from the 



At the Threshold 75 



doing of right and the smile of God upon it. The 
constant disapproval of his Heavenly Father should 
appear to him as a thing to be feared and avoided. 
He would be sad, indeed, under yours. Carry for- 
ward the favor and the disfavor in their continu- 
ance within the next world, and assure him that, 
while the one can give him eternal joy, the other 
must, with his self-condemnation, create eternal 
misery. Teach him whatever is clearly shown by 
the Word; not forcing a literal meaning upon it 
when there is reason to regard it as speaking figura- 
tively, nor treating the figures as weak or meaning- 
less. Neither Christ nor the inspired writers used 
any type that did not represent a reality. The sen- 
tence of God's judgment on each person capable of 
moral choice will be determined by his declaring 
for good or evil in his own probation. We may 
believe, if we will, that the blessedness of the saved 
and the misery of the lost will be, in degree, accord- 
ing to God's knowledge of them and their possi- 
bilities ; but when we have reduced the whole ques- 
tion to the simplest conceptions consistent with 
Scripture, we still know that, whatever heaven 
means, it is good, and we want our children to en- 
joy it; and whatever hell means, it is evil, and we 
want them to avoid it. Now, if it is right to use 
heaven as an attraction to a holy life, it must be 
equally so to employ hell as a means of turning 
from evil. So did Christ and His apostles, and you 
can safely follow them. 

When the child knows that self-dedication to 
God is his duty and advantage, and that to withhold 
it can not be other than wrong, he is surely at "the 
parting of the ways." When, judging by the signs 



76 Salvation of the Little Child 



and confirmed by the Spirit's guidance, you believe 
him to be so, your next duty is to bring him to 
such tests as will settle it beyond doubt, and to 
make these as helpful as possible to a right course. 
They should be made calmly and tactfully, else you 
may hasten a wrong decision by your very anxiety 
to prevent it. Seek the necessary preparation and 
direction from God; do nothing without these. 
Some special providence may open your way; cir- 
cumstances beyond your control may affect your 
action; but your natural line of movement may be 
easily seen and followed. 

The teaching of duty and the call to it ought to 
suffice. He can not help choosing. Conscious neg- 
lect or intentional delay will be a choice, and the 
wrong one. Yet he may not see either to be so. 
It may seem to be merely a "taking of time to con- 
sider the matter/' with a half-formed purpose to 
attend to it soon. Of the courses possible, none is 
so seemingly harmless and so really dangerous as 
this putting off of the duty. If this is his mind, 
show him that, as it is wrong to neglect or delay 
obedience to you, so it is, in a higher degree and 
with more serious consequences, to do so with God, 
who is now waiting on his obedience. Ask him to 
take it at once to Him in prayer, that he may be 
enabled to do it. His past use of prayer will help 
him ; and if he takes it to God the matter is virtually 
settled, for He will say to him what he just then 
needs to that end. 

He may, however, be tempted not to do this. If 
so, you may then ask: "Why do you not wish to 
talk to God about it ? You have been used to do so 
about other things. Is it not the right way in this ?" 



At the Threshold 77 



To such questioning he can scarcely fail to give 
you some useful clue. If he is waiting on a special 
occasion, show him that it can never be better done 
than when he first sees that he ought to do it. 

If he still delays, point out that, if he will not 
pray about it, God will understand that he is un- 
willing to love and believe in, and obey, Him any 
longer. This should be your last resort, taken only 
when you have exhausted all other right means and 
have no doubt as to his moral choice being in exer- 
cise. It should be a help to him. In the face of 
it, only a resolute purpose could make him per- 
sist in neglect. I am persuaded that in very few 
instances would a child so trained deliberately turn 
from God in this way ; and I have only pursued the 
matter to this point to meet a possible need. Some- 
where along this route any hindrance may be dis- 
covered and dealt with. So I will gladly return to 
the more probable experience. 

The child in self-dedication gives himself to God 
with all his love, faith, and other powers, for time 
and eternity, in the name of Christ and by the grace 
of the Holy Spirit. This is the act of love. He 
must also believe that God, for Christ's sake and by 
His Spirit, accepts his dedication and seals afresh 
his salvation ; that he is saved now, not as hereto- 
fore without his choice, but because by grace he 
chooses to continue his relation to God forever. 
This is the act of faith, and corresponds to that 
which is exercised by an accountable sinner in 
conversion. God, on His side of this covenant, pro- 
ceeds to fulfill His gracious promises and gives the 
witness of His Spirit to His acceptance of the 
child. 



78 



Salvation of the Little Child 



Having made this clear to him ; whether you 
shall be with him at the time of his dedication must 
be determined by divine guidance. If permitted, 
pray with and guide him as you may, but give him 
all the time he needs for direct dealing with God. 
If forbidden, pray for him elsewhere, and trust 
him to the care of the Holy Spirit. There are some 
advantages in taking the great step alone with God. 
For one thing, no after doubts can be built upon the 
notion that you over-persuaded or misdirected him 
at that time. 

When he can tell you that God has accepted 
him, join with him in hearty thanksgiving. Men- 
tion it in family prayer, speak of it often enough 
to encourage him by your evident confidence. 
Teach him to thank God for it at every fresh ap- 
proach to Him, and especially for the unbroken re- 
lation. So dwell upon this as to impress him with 
its unspeakable value, and that he may make it his 
life-resolve that it shall never be broken, but 
strengthened day by day. The godly on earth, the 
glorified "spirits of the just made perfect/' and the 
angels, will all rejoice with him and with you; and 
in the heart of Infinite Love there will be an in- 
finite joy because His purpose and yours has been 
blessedly fulfilled. 

Here, then, is the experience of a child cross- 
ing the threshold in a saved state, and able, with 
its continuance, to declare that he can not remember 
the time when he was not sure of God's favor and 
his own safety. When such witness is based, not 
on the consciousness of spiritual influence merely, 
or on the absence of conscious apostasy, but on the 
merits of Christ and the work of the Spirit, retained 



At the Threshold 79 



by self-dedication, and the life is found in plain 
agreement with this, it can be accepted without 
hesitation. 

And now, in view of all that has passed, let me 
ask, At what conceivable time can the greatest ques- 
tion of all life be so easily and satisfactorily settled 
as at the threshold of accountability? We may al- 
low the findings of recent observers as to certain 
periods within which souls are more easily brought 
to God than at other times within accountability by 
the co-operation of external influences with internal 
conditions ; but if, in the case of any child of godly 
parentage, more of the former are ready to help 
him, or his mind, heart, and will are more ready to 
respond to the divine call at any other point in life's 
course than this, it can only be through the failure, 
and to the unutterable shame, of those whom God 
has called to lead him to conscious salvation. 



CHAPTER XII 



Perils, Possibilities, and Profession 

The work of grace done at the threshold does 
not put the spiritual state of the child beyond the 
possibility of a change. With the coming of ac- 
countability he enters on a probation. He is now 
capable of voluntary sin, as distinguished from the 
evil of ignorance of his moral infancy. Satan will 
not give up the hope of turning him from his God. 
There is a life-long battle to be fought and won. 
The price of his continued liberty is "eternal vigi- 
lance/' But "forewarned is forearmed," and with 
this the first help to his safety is provided. He 
must see his dangers clearly ; but also as always 
conquerable when met bravely in the strength of 
his Lord. 

Moreover, you have yet more to teach him, and 
he has still more to learn. He is not only in a higher 
grade with advanced studies, but also learning un- 
der new conditions. He can not stand still; lead 
him on. Give him the divine promises and warn- 
ings. Translate into child language such passages 
as i Cor. x, 13 ; Matt, xxvi, 41 ; and tell him stories 
of successful Christian living by little people. 

There are, however, two perils, special to his 
case. The first is that, not having known any con- 

80 



Perils, Possibilities, and Profession 81 



scious opposition to God, he may easily lay this 
to a supposed native goodness. But you know that 
ail his good has been the product of grace, either 
working directly, or through your training and other 
helpful external influences. You must now guard 
him by your assurances that his past and present 
goodness would have been impossible apart from 
the sacrifice of Christ and the work of the Holy 
Spirit, and that he will always be dependent on 
these divine powers. 

The second danger is of his being led to assume 
that, with such a beginning, he need not be so care- 
ful to learn God's will or so watchful against temp- 
tation as he must have been after a life of sin. His 
familiarity with divine leadings and his past readi- 
ness of obedience will not relieve him of the need 
of care and watchfulness ; his advantage from these 
will be in the ease and success with which he can 
exercise them, when he does so promptly and faith- 
fully in the power of God. Failure in these will 
bring failure in spiritual life, and as surely with 
him as with anybody. Of these things he has need 
to be carefully taught and often reminded. 

From his perils I gladly turn to his possibilities 
in grace. With the precautions given, his con- 
stancy to God will be sustained. Grace will always 
be ready and sufficient. Those who are early saved 
hold their Christian life more generally than those 
converted later, Mr. Spurgeon, the great Baptist 
preacher of London, used to say that though, with 
his large church membership, he had often to ad- 
minister discipline, he had never had to do so to 
any who had become believers in childhood. 

Under his new covenant conditions the child is 
6 



82 



Salvation of the Little Child 



called upon to love God with all his "heart, soul, 
mind, and strength" (Deut. vi, 5; Matt, xxii, 37) ; 
and as these expand they must be kept full of love 
and exercised in it. But this depends on a corre- 
sponding and growing faith, as the faith does, in 
its turn, on the love. From them will spring a full 
and hearty obedience. One who saw much of the 
Rev. Alfred Cookman, both in public and private, 
has said that his life was "a continual 'Yes' to his 
Heavenly Father." He was converted in child- 
hood. I am sure that, other things equal, the earlier 
the acceptance of grace the greater will be the ease 
of securing such an experience. For this, there- 
fore, the unbroken relation will be the best of all 
encouragements. This covers the reality variously 
described as holiness, the higher Christian life, per- 
fect love, entire sanctMcation and Christian per- 
fection. I find nothing in Scripture, reason, or ob- 
servation to suggest any difficulty special to the 
case of the child. Perfection is as possible to the 
babe as to the full-grown man. If completeness and 
proportion of parts, capacity, health, and natural 
growth of body, mind, and soul are present, there 
surely is perfection, without regard to age or stage 
of development. Maturity comes only with growth, 
but this is most rapid in the life that is already 
perfect. 

The child is also called to a true love of himself 
(as inferred) and to a similar love of all men (as 
commanded) in the second of the great laws (Lev. 
xix, 18) confirmed by Christ (Matt, xxii, 39; 
Mark xii, 31 ; Luke x, 27) : "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." For this he must enter into 
God's will for both, as arising out of His love and 



Perils, Possibilities, and Profession 83 



ministering to His glory, and believe in Him as 
being wise and strong to accomplish His purpose. 
Then he will be willing to take whatever task God 
gives him and do it in His power, looking to Him 
for guidance as to the when, the where, and the 
how of the doing; and, having done it at his best, 
will come to Him again and cheerfully ask, "What 
next, Father?" 

If you ask, "What can a child do?" I answer, 
anything that God sets him to do. He will not give 
him tasks beyond his natural powers without also 
providing special influences or co-operating agen- 
cies sufficient to the purposes in view. He is too 
greatly concerned for the child to do him a wrong, 
and for the success of His plans to imperil them by 
using an unsuitable agent. Trust Him, then, to 
use the child as His infinite love and wisdom see 
fit, and to protect him by His infinite power from 
harm in the using. Fearlessly engage his heart in 
a true sympathy for all in sin and need. Tell him 
of children who have been made the means of help- 
ing others to love God. He will soon have experi- 
ences of his own to tell. The great and good 
seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, who became a Chris- 
tian in childhood, soon afterwards began to form 
the purposes which grew into a career unexcelled 
in religious and philanthropic usefulness. His 
wealth and rank were but helpful circumstances ; he 
was one of those who, having love and faith, will, 
in the absence of special advantages, still find ways 
to help humanity. If your child be not called to do 
great things, let him do the little ones ; nobody can 
tell to what they will grow. They often exceed in 
fruitfulness the more ambitious efforts. Do not 



84 Salvation of the Little Child 



suffer any to discourage him. Advise and guide 
him, but do not hinder a true service. Teach him to 
work under the direction of older Christians. In 
the spirit of Hannah, take him to his pastor and sug- 
gest that when he knows of anything that the Lord 
has for one of His little boys to do, here is a willing 
one. Among the forms of work possible to him, I 
feel sure that God will use him in helping to bring 
the blessing of the unbroken relation into the lives of 
other little children. Parents desiring this wall wel- 
come his example and influence in their homes ; 
and it is impossible to tell how much good he may 
do among the children of the unsaved. 

The child should now be received by the visible 
Church as a Christian by personal choice and God's 
acceptance, and as publicly as he was received at 
his baptism. The pastor should, of course, satisfy 
himself of the reality of the work of grace ; but 
when this is assured there should be a hearty wel- 
come. Before his fellow believers he should be en- 
couraged to state his experience and purposes of 
life, and be enrolled as an active member of the 
Church. In everything he should be treated with 
full respect and consideration. Is he not a son 
of the Great King, an heir of heaven ? The appear- 
ance of such a child before the Church for the 
recognition of his relationship to God, can never 
fail to awaken in me a thrill of joy mingled with 
holy awe. I am honored to receive him as a prince 
to whom the knowledge of his high dignity has 
recently come. He must see in me a true representa- 
tive of his Royal Father ; and I must remember that 
in him I am receiving his Lord and mine (Matt, 
xviii, 5). He should retire from the reception not 



Perils, Possibilities, and Profession 85 



only with an enlarged sense of his sonship to God, 
but also with such a consciousness of his standing 
among the children of the divine family as will 
make his movements among them confident and 
comfortable. He must feel that he belongs to it. 

It is now his right to share in all spiritual privi- 
leges, and particularly he can not be barred on any 
Scriptural grounds from the Lord's table, In the 
Sunday-school he will receive the usual progressive 
instruction, in the preparation for which you should 
help him. Welcome his teacher as his own special 
visitor, and counsel with this friend as a co-worker. 
He ought also to belong to a class in which his 
spiritual experience can be directly cultivated and 
his churchly obligations taught him with others of 
like standing. And, further, he should have fre- 
quent opportunities of hearing the prayers and testi- 
monies of older Christians, and of giving his own 
among them. In all he should learn to bear his 
witness modestly and to give the glory of all his 
good to God. 

But, whatever the Church may do for your 
child, it will still be your privilege to be his most 
loved and trusted counselors. With continued 
faithfulness the spiritual relation between you and 
him will grow stronger every day. 



CHAPTER XIII 



The Alternative Experience 

I have been dealing thus far with the case as 
it ought to be. But you are wondering what you 
should do if, through error or defect of yours, the 
loving care you expend should fail to secure with 
your child the maintenance of the unbroken rela- 
tion. You must not let any fear of this hurtfully 
affect your faith or training; but neither must I 
leave you without guidance and encouragement for 
the possible event. 

By whatever route the child reaches his decision, 
it settles the question for the time being, and on the 
wrong side. Every following moment is laden with 
the guilt of conscious opposition to God, for upon 
every reminder he finds himself still on the same 
line of direction. He will probably give the mat- 
ter as little thought as possible, but in that very 
unwillingness to consider it justly, there is sin. 

He has scarcely resolved never to be a Chris- 
tian. He most likely intends to be one some day, 
when the immediate ends of his delay are secured; 
or he may simply let the whole matter drift. Know- 
ing your love, and your wish that he should be right 
with God, he will probably try to keep his purpose 
to himself ; and even practice little arts of evasion, 
not so much to deceive you as to save you from the 
pain that he knows his course must cause. And 

86 



The Alternative Experience 87 



you may be tempted to meet this with a corre- 
sponding reserve, and in silence to cherish the hope 
that his case will prove to be less serious than at 
first you feared. Do not so deceive yourselves, nor 
suffer anything to deceive you. God is not de- 
ceived, but views this delay of duty with absolute 
disapproval. His holiness is at issue with it. This 
is no time for you to be at ease about it. Failure 
in your duty will bring you also under condemna- 
tion. Neither, on the other hand, is it a time for 
panic. You need all your powers for better use, 
and a calm but resolute and persistent action. There 
is still strong reason to hope that you will soon 
bring him to the desired good, and the sooner you 
set yourselves to this the greater will be the prob- 
ability of success. Remember that both the power 
of habit and the hardening effect of evil will grow 
with the fast passing days. Resolve that you will 
save as much as possible of his life from Satan and 
sin for God and righteousness. 

Give yourselves to earnest study of the case and 
to prayer. If you have failed in personal obliga- 
tion, seek forgiveness and reinstatement in parental 
privilege and influence. Then to the belated duty. 

If you have neglected to dedicate him to God, 
do this next. He belongs to you as much as ever, 
and you can not begin your efforts to turn him back 
to his Heavenly Father better than by that act of 
love and faith. In answer, God will work spe- 
cially on him by His Spirit and providence. Ask 
Him whether you shall do it apart from or in the 
presence of the child, and follow fearlessly His 
direction of your judgment. 

The neglect of baptism can not be dealt with 



88 Salvation of the Little Child 



in the same way. That rite can not, from this 
time, be properly administered until he has re- 
newed his saving relation to God. 

If you have failed somewhere in his training, 
my earlier suggestions will show where the error 
or omission was made, and also the course to be 
pursued, so that I need not repeat them. Bring 
up any arrears of instruction and personal influence 
that will be helpful to his conversion (for this term 
now comes into its proper use). 

He must first listen to the Spirit's voice and 
yield to His workings. Then he must be honestly 
sorry for having turned from and grieved God, 
and for every wrong arising out of the rebellion ; 
and turn back to Him with confession of his sin 
and declaration of his right purpose for all the 
future. He must ask for pardon, cleansing, and the 
new life, and believe that God, for Christ's sake and 
by His Spirit, grants him restoration to His like- 
ness and favor, and to love, faith, and obedience. 
Pursue this teaching until he sees it clearly, then 
turn all your endeavors to bring him to the doing. 
Believe that the Spirit is working zvith and through 
you, as well as directly on the child, and you will 
then have confidence in the result and press your 
own efforts accordingly. 

He will probably continue, at least for a time, 
in the good habits formed during his training, and 
be kind, truthful, and so forth. It may be difficult 
to see that these fruits of the earlier care are not 
acceptable to God ; but they certainly are not, for 
he refuses to adopt the supreme motives from 
which they should spring. They show him to be 
still capable of doing right ; but, as he will not do 



The Alternative Experience 



89 



it in the chief issues, they only become grounds 
for his just condemnation. 

If, however, he continues in his present way, 
definite expressions of the evil of his course will 
arise sooner or later ; and of these you must take 
notice, not only by discipline, but also by showing 
him their character as proof that his heart is wrong 
and that his habits are following its sinful direc- 
tion. Press upon him the consequences of the first 
open sin. It will be eternally true that he has com- 
mitted it. No power, even of God, can undo that 
fact or make his life as if it had not been done. 
Here is a- true story that will help you : A little 
boy, the child of godly parents, resisted all their 
efforts to lead him to the right life. He also fell 
into the habit of using profane words. Discipline 
failing to correct this, his father adopted a plan to 
shame him by showing how often his habit led him 
into sin. He took him to a post in the garden, and 
said: "Every time, Willie, that I know of your 
saying a bad word, I shall drive a nail into this 
post." The boy seemingly paid no heed. The nails 
grew in number, until a revival came, in the course 
of which he gave his heart to God. His father then 
promised to remove a nail for each day in which 
he kept from his evil habit. Willie held to God and 
grace, and watched the disappearance of the nails. 
On the drawing of the last, the father, turning from 
the doing, found the boy in tears, and exclaimed in 
surprise : "Why, Willie ! I thought you would be 
glad." "So I am, Papa," he answered with a sob, 
"but all the holes are still there." Apply this also 
to his refusal to give his heart and life to 
God, which, as long as it continues, holds him 



90 Salvation of the Little Child 



in sin. The sooner he turns to God the less of 
sin will he have to grieve over. Keep before him 
the danger from the hardening by sin and the set- 
tling of evil habit in the very putting off of duty, 
and the eternal consequences of them all if they be 
persisted in. Above and beyond all this, keep be- 
fore him the love and care of the Heavenly Father 
refused, the love and sufferings of the Savior re- 
jected, the love and strivings of the Spirit resisted. 
Illustrate this by your own love and care, disap- 
pointment and grief, assuring him that God cares 
infinitely more about it than you can do. This 
should appeal most powerfully to him. Repeat 
your acts of love and faith until they succeed. 
Seize upon every providential and gracious circum- 
stance that can be used. Gladly welcome every 
human help that is evidently of God's sending; but 
never cease to pray and believe that He will give 
you the joy, after all. of being the most influential 
of all His human agents in the winning of this 
precious soul. 



CHAPTER XIV 



Last Words 

We have now brought the little child to the 
boundary of his experience, where it touches that 
of the general body of believers. Save as his fur- 
ther development must be forwarded by helps 
suited to his still growing capacities, there is noth- 
ing in it that calls for further discussion. 

Looking backwards over the way in which he 
has been trained, and realizing its harmony with the 
will of God and the evidences of His blessing upon 
the child in it, you can now believe that he will 
not depart from it. Delightful would it be to trace 
the benefits throughout a long and honored life ; 
but we can not know the measure of his days in 
this world, nor the various conditions and circum- 
stances that may enter into it. So, being unable to 
forcast these, let me strengthen your hearts by such 
assurances as are grounded upon the infinite holi- 
ness and unchangeable faithfulness of God. 

While we have been discussing the possibilities 
of his future, your little one has only grown a few 
days older. The babe that you have dedicated to 
God with so noble and blessed an enthusiasm, with 
such fullness of love and confidence, may pass from 
your sight" before you can carry his training to the 
threshold and self-dedication. If so, your hearts 
will be rent, but not your faith. You will be dis- 
appointed of your earthly opportunities, but not of 

91 



92 Salvation of the Little Child 



your heavenly expectations. The angels will bear 
away his ransomed spirit to the presence of his 
Lord. The best of care will be taken of him. 
Heaven is a perfect home. Judging by what we 
can see of God's plans for this world, I believe that 
he will not be bound to an eternal infancy or imma- 
turity, but will grow in all ways. And since it 
would have been your duty to train him if he had 
continued with you, I can not doubt that he will 
be trained there. Heaven is a perfect school. 
Your dedication will not be in vain. Baptism will 
be the sign both of his state of grace here and of 
his state of glory there. God will but have taken 
your will for the deed, and a constant blessing will 
rest upon you here and upon your child yonder 
because of it. By and by you will find him, and 
rejoice together forever. This teaching is very 
real to me. Our second child was only lent to us 
for a few days. You can now understand our 
happy interest in the salvation of the moral infant. 

But, whatever the length of his life here, it may, 
in the way I have described, be filled fullest of 
good and raised to its highest possible level, while 
his life in heaven will be its eternal continuance 
in a bliss that is not dimmed by the memory of a 
moment's estrangement from God, and a service 
that can not suffer by any loss of efficiency through 
the influence of sin. It is the most perfect form of 
our most blessed hope. And of all our efforts to 
do good none will be more certain of God's ap- 
proval, more satisfactory to ourselves, more fruit- 
ful of blessing to our race, than those in which we 
have wrought faithfully under the divine hand for 
the salvation of the little child. 



The Open Door 



THE MOVEMENT FOR THE 
SALVATION OF THE LITTLE CHILD 

May now be described: 

First, let its chief purpose be restated, in the 
light of the foregoing teachings, as THE bringing 

OF THE CHILDREN TO ACCEPTABLE AND EFFECTIVE 
SELF-DEDICATION TO THE LOVE AND SERVICE OF GOD 
AT THE THRESHOLD OF ACCOUNTABILITY, AND THE 
LIFELONG ENJOYMENT OF THE UNBROKEN SAVING 
RELATION TO HlM. 

For this end the chief human agents to be 

SOUGHT IN THE PARENTS AND GUARDIANS OF THE 

children, according to the manifest will and plan 
of God; and these engaged to their best En- 
deavors THERETO, UNDER GUIDANCE OF THE HOLY 

Spirit, by the use of this book and of such 
other helps as may providentially arise. 

The necessity and immediate urgency of this 
work has been shown. It has been all too long 
undone. Nothing else that is being done is serving 
the purpose. The better instructed among Chris- 
tians have been feeling their way but slowly to a 
right understanding of the will of God for the 
children ; cautiously acknowledging from time to 
time that perhaps their spiritual possibilities were 
being underrated, and venturing to set the earliest 
time at which they could be brought into a conscious 
saving relation to their heavenly Father a little 
nearer to their infancy. Many helpful and eloquent 
things have been said and written to encourage the 



94 Salvation of the Little Child 



expectation and cultivation of child-piety. The 
Cradle Roll has appeared in the Sunday-school ; 
some improvements have been made in books for 
the instruction of the youngest scholars ; and kinder- 
garten methods have been adopted here and there. 
The responsibility of parents for their own work, 
and in no small part for the success of the teacher, 
has been urged with greater emphasis. This seems 
to be the limit of the advance. A few have followed 
these leadings ; but the Christian masses have 
scarcely swerved by a hair's breadth from their 
current defective notions and consequent neglect 
of duty. For want of a definite and satisfactory 
result to be sought ; and a plan, complete and prac- 
tical, which could, from the outset, give reasonable 
assurance of the highest kind and degree of suc- 
cess ; the appeals and efforts have been weak and the 
parents uninfluenced. Evidently a nezv view, radi- 
cal and clear, and a new course of action, aggres- 
sive and progressive, were needed. 

At this stage of affairs the Movement has made 
its appearance. It proposes to bring the teachings 
and influence of the book to certain classes of peo- 
ple. 

1. To Christian parents, not only for the benefit 
of their children and themselves, but also with the 
expectation that they will pass on the help to others. 

2. To ministers of the Gospel, seeking their co- 
operation in pulpit and pastoral work. 

3. To deaconesses and Sunday-school and other 
lay workers who have to do with little children, ask- 
ing their help in forms suited to their opportunities. 

4. To unsaved parents by way of the above 
agencies ; for, while the book is addressed to Chris- 
tians, it may also be used to reveal to these their 



The Open Door 95 



unfitness to serve the spiritual life of their chil- 
dren, and so make their natural affection a means 
of leading them to seek first their own salvation 
and then that of their offspring. 

Beginning with the homeland; it must reach 
the foreign field, overtake the general work of the 
Gospel, and, with this, cover the world. 

To effect this no elaborate organization is 
needed. The work is a natural and regular part 
of the duty of the Christian Church collectively, 
and of the godly individually; and calls only for 
such a proportion of their interest and help as is 
due to its relative importance. All that is needed 
beyond this is an agency for the supply of the book 
and of such simple direction and aid to its circula- 
tion and use as will make these as wide and effective 
as possible. This provision has been made in a 
management under conditions that insure safe and 
efficient working. 

No attempt, therefore, will be made to enroll any 
general membership or take any pledges. Meet- 
ings can be held, or circles formed, to forward the 
work anywhere, and without affiliation with any 
central body. The local Church and the individual 
Christian are alike free to do whatever they can to 
further the aims of the Movement. 

For the circulation of the book two lines of 
action are in view, viz. : 

Sale by retail, direct from the office; either to 
the purchaser or any person specified by him. It 
can not be bought at the stores. 

Gratuitous distribution over specified areas ; the 
funds for which will be raised, administered, and 
guaranteed, by a local management in each case. 
For this purpose the book, in issues of 1,000 copies 



96 Salvation of the Little Child 



and upwards, can be obtained at a price so low as 
to justify the adoption of this plan on a large scale. 
Information as to this will be furnished to responsi- 
ble inquirers. 

A General Fund has been opened at the Office, 
from which grants in aid of the larger free distribu- 
tions will be made. Contributors to this will be able 
to reach more receivers with the book through any 
given outlay than will be possible by retail pur- 
chase. Such gifts will be promptly acknowledged. 
Proper accounts and vouchers will be kept of all the 
receipts and disbursements of this fund, and these 
will be open at all proper times to inspection by all 
proper persons ; and submitted annually to an audit- 
ing committee of members of the Colorado Confer- 
ence of the Methodist Episcopal Church, whose re- 
port shall be printed with the Minutes of that body 
for the current year, and sent (in separate form) 
to any person sending a two-cent stamp to the Office 
for the same. The office work is in charge of a 
business manager ; and its expenses of administra- 
tion are secured as a first charge on the profits of 
sales. Therefore all moneys received as contribu- 
tions, either to the General Fund or to the funds 
raised under local management, will be used only 
for their own increase, for the purchase of books 
and for paying the cost of their free distribution. 
Beyond these simple lines the character, extent, 
and cost of the work will be determined for them- 
selves by all who engage in it. 

Such other information as may be of use to 
those interested will be issued from time to time 
in the advertisements of the Movement, by inserts 
sent out with the books, and by such other means 
as may become available. 



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